JOSEPHINE G. HALSELL
 
 38 j> Jflarjaret 
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE. With frontis- 
 piece. I2IT1O, $1.50. 
 DAPHNE: An Autumn Pastoral. i2mo, $1.00. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE
 
 SHE WAS MAKING A SONG OF THE TIDE
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET SHERWOOD 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 iiiucrsi&c press, Cambridge 
 1905
 
 COPYRIGHT 1905 BY MARGARET SHERWOOD 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October 1905
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 22291S3
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 LJ NDEE the sun-smitten branches of the 
 woodland and along the open road that 
 curved, all golden with dust, over hill and 
 through hollow, the warm air was full of the 
 breath of pine and juniper and fern, and of 
 the poignant sweetness of the sea. Now leaf 
 shadows fell on the face of the girl who was 
 being driven rapidly in a light carriage to- 
 ward the east, and then the full sunlight of 
 June lay there. The beat, beat, beat of the 
 horse's hoofs seemed to set the world in mo- 
 tion ; the quick, uneven wind, the fluttering 
 yellow butterflies, the slow black wings of 
 crows overhead, even the gently floating 
 white clouds against the dim blue, were to 
 her full of the sudden joy of those that move 
 and escape. Leaning back in her seat, she 
 closed her eyes, opening them now and then
 
 2 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 to steal a half-fearful glance to the right, 
 where, between dark tree-trunks or beyond 
 the gray-green tangles of a bit of moorland, 
 the sea lay, incredibly blue. This undreamed 
 beauty was almost hard to bear, bringing new 
 pain to meet the old pain in her heart. Once 
 a sudden turn at the top of a little hill be- 
 trayed to her the wide horizon line, and she 
 gave a little cry, " Oh, don't speak to me ! " 
 forgetting that she had come on her journey 
 alone. The lank brown driver turned with a 
 New England twinkle in his eye. 
 
 " I had n't cal'lated to, ma'am," he ob- 
 served dryly ; then stopped, for a laugh such 
 as he had never heard rang out on his ear, 
 mellow, mocking, irresistible. It ran up to 
 clear high notes and down to a soft ripple 
 that ended in a little sob, and it made music 
 all the way. 
 
 " I was not speaking to you," observed his 
 passenger, before the laugh had quite died 
 out. 
 
 He nodded. " Thought likely not. Git up,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 3 
 
 Don ! Was you talkin' to anybody in per- 
 tikaler ? " 
 
 " Only to ghosts," answered the voice, half 
 merry, half sad. 
 
 " Took that way often ? " 
 
 He missed the laughter in the eyes behind 
 him, being too lazy to look quite far enough 
 around. 
 
 " Very often." 
 
 There was a sudden note of sorrow in the 
 voice, that did not escape the large ears of 
 Andrew Lane the third. 
 
 " Your trunks 'ull be right over," he re- 
 marked, administering the only consolation 
 that occurred to him. 
 
 " I don't care about the trunks," was the 
 answer. 
 
 This almost tempted Andrew to look all the 
 way around ; he had noticed nothing peculiar 
 about this young woman when she had 
 stepped from the train, but surely this was 
 unnatural. As he was considering the prob- 
 lem of a girl with clothes like that, and as
 
 4 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 many trunks as that, who still said she did 
 not care, he was roused by slow notes of the 
 same odd voice. 
 
 " Blue and blue and blue. Why did 
 no one ever tell me, or could no one tell ? " 
 
 " Air they arter ye again ? " asked Andrew, 
 this time turning round all the way. He got 
 no answer, however, and all that he saw was 
 the face of a girl whose eyes were closed. 
 Through the long dark lashes two tears were 
 forcing their way ; the lips were slightly 
 parted, drinking in the fragrant air, and the 
 ungloved hands were outstretched in her lap, 
 as if through the very finger tips some con- 
 tact could be gained with this encompass- 
 ing loveliness which made pain within the 
 eyes. 
 
 " Mighty queer," muttered Andrew to his 
 horse, and he drove on, not without appre- 
 hension. Once he had heard of an insane 
 woman who had escaped from the state asy- 
 lum, and had come down to this very bit of 
 coast, where, after haunting the rocks for
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 5 
 
 several days, she had plunged into the sea 
 and been drowned. 
 
 " But this here one's trunks was all O.K.," 
 he reassured himself. " Lunatic could n't get 
 away with three on 'em, big as haystacks." 
 
 It was a solitary road, which seemed to 
 lead to the very heart of some world of leafy, 
 tempered beauty, for June was passing along 
 the water-ways, and all the land was quick 
 with leaf and blossom. A wind was abroad 
 in the soft marsh grass and in the purpling 
 feathery grasses of the higher meadow lands, 
 where buttercups and daisies nodded in the 
 waving green. Now and then across the 
 shadow of flickering branches came the soft 
 gleam of yellow wings or of blue, and once, 
 from far away, rippled the notes of a young 
 bobolink that was singing madly for the mere 
 joy of living. At long intervals, from out the 
 sheltering branches of elm tree or of maple, 
 rose the dull red chimney of a farmhouse, 
 whose doorways and windows were half hid- 
 den by blossoming lilac and syringa bushes;
 
 6 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 and again, on some green sea-meadow or 
 rocky headland, stood out the rough gray 
 stone walls of a rich man's summer home. 
 An air of quaint distinction rested upon one 
 old-fashioned place in a sheltered cove at the 
 right, where smooth-hewn pillars of granite 
 rock, surmounted by balls of stone, guarded 
 the entrance. A hedge of spiraea, whose long 
 sprays were now in delicate bloom of white, 
 marked the confines of the lawn ; a wide 
 graveled driveway, bordered by overarching 
 elms, led to a great colonial mansion, whose 
 white walls and tall pillars gleamed out softly 
 from behind green branches of elm and 
 of pine ; and all, perhaps because of some 
 touch of wildness in the uncut grass and the 
 luxuriant foliage, wore a storied look. Ne- 
 glect, which had not yet brought it an air 
 of desolation, seemed to hint of a full tide 
 of life that had come and gone, and to the 
 eyes of the girl who was gazing at it, win- 
 dow and doorway and threshold were elo- 
 quent.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 7 
 
 " That 's the Warren place," observed An- 
 drew, with the air of one who would say that 
 even mentally unbalanced strangers should 
 know of its importance. He got no reply, 
 however, and drove on in silence, turning to 
 the right a few minutes later, into a road, 
 grass-grown and lovely, leading across a bit 
 of moor to the sea. Ahead, upon one of the 
 bold bluffs that jutted into the water, rose the 
 severe gray shingled walls and the red chim- 
 neys of the Emerson Inn, set in a space of 
 velvety turf, where gleamed the gold of un- 
 numbered dandelions. 
 
 The ladies of the Emerson Inn were seated 
 on the south veranda that afternoon, em- 
 broidering, or knitting loose-meshed shawls, 
 or weaving baskets of Indian grass. There 
 were two dark brown heads, and one pale 
 brown head, but most of the heads were gray, 
 and the smoothly parted hair bespoke unim- 
 peachable conservative traditions. The pale 
 brown head was bent over a book, and its 
 owner, in a voice a trifle high and thin, was
 
 8 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 reading Ibsen aloud, while the very air, as 
 well as the intent expressions of foreheads, 
 eyes, and mouths, betrayed an atmosphere 
 of extreme intellectual stimulus. There was 
 no pause when Andrew drove up with the 
 newcomer. A dozen pairs of spectacled eyes 
 looked up for an instant, but the ladies of the 
 Emerson Inn were ladies, and curiosity was 
 something not to be betrayed. Once, for a 
 second, the voice faltered and almost stopped, 
 as a girl all in soft black, dusky-haired, and 
 with eyelids cast down, sprang to the piazza 
 steps, then, ignoring host, hostess, and the 
 assembled guests, passed swiftly down the 
 worn footpath to the rocks and began to climb 
 over them toward the sea. It was a graceful 
 figure, pausing lightly on one bit of stone 
 and springing to the next, and it moved as 
 if drawn by some attraction too mighty to 
 resist. Mr. Phipps, the landlord, looked ques- 
 tioningly after; Andrew, as he gathered up 
 the reins, touched his forehead significantly 
 with one finger.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 9 
 
 " Sunthin' loose there," he remarked suc- 
 cinctly. 
 
 Mr. Phipps, with his hands behind him, 
 strolled down the grassy knoll toward the 
 rocks, and then back again ; at the rear en- 
 trance three large trunks arrived and were 
 noisily deposited on the ground ; on the ve- 
 randa Ibsen went on, uninterrupted, though 
 full of a tension that was not Ibsen's own, 
 for down on the cliff, at the farthest point, 
 where the red-brown rocks met the blue, all 
 motionless lingered a slender black shadow, 
 spoiling the embroidery, spoiling the sight 
 of the eyes behind the glasses, spoiling the 
 play. 
 
 " A new guest, Mr. Phipps ? " casually in- 
 quired the Lady from Cincinnati, the only 
 person there who dared interrupt Ibsen. 
 
 " I thought so," he observed nonchalantly, 
 taking the cigar from his lips, " but it looks 
 as if I might lose her." 
 
 The girl, who had forgotten them all, stood 
 where the beat of the waves on the rock
 
 10 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 came to her as a part of her own being : the 
 very pulse of life seemed throbbing there. 
 Suddenly she stretched her arms out to it 
 with a little sob that mingled with the mur- 
 mur of the waves. 
 
 "Mother! " she cried, "mother! "and then, 
 " It rests me so ! " 
 
 Into her eyes had come the look of those 
 who have won the freedom of the sea. 
 
 When the reading was over the ladies on 
 the piazza dispersed, some wandering down 
 to the rocks, some going to their own rooms. 
 Three took a constitutional, strolling round 
 the house. 
 
 " She has not registered," observed the 
 Lady from Cincinnati as they passed through 
 the hall. 
 
 " How sad she looked ! " remarked the 
 Lady from Wilmington. 
 
 " Why, /thought she looked mischievous ! " 
 cried the Lady from Boston. 
 
 " It was not an intellectual countenance," 
 said the first speaker severely.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 11 
 
 Incidentally on the walk they encountered 
 the trunks. 
 
 " Good make," observed the Lady from 
 Cincinnati silently. " Leather, but with no 
 foreign labels ; " and she went upstairs with 
 a puzzled frown. Strangers were rare at the 
 Emerson Inn, and of the few who had come 
 since Miss Black had assumed the responsi- 
 bilities of Oldest Inhabitant, none had been 
 like this. When she reached her room she 
 noted signs that the vacant apartment next 
 door was occupied at last. It was a corner 
 room, looking eastward toward the sea and 
 northward toward the moor, and was too 
 expensive for Miss Black's own purse. The 
 elderly lady stopped in amazement, for an 
 unwonted sound met her ears. Over the 
 transom came a ripple of laughter such as 
 had seldom sounded on the New England 
 shore. It was as if the very spirit of mirth 
 were set free, and might be expected to fly 
 in over the transom with fluttering, iridescent 
 wings.
 
 12 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " That girl ! " exclaimed the Lady from 
 Cincinnati, with an expression. 
 
 The girl was standing in the centre of her 
 own room, slowly surveying it, the slop- 
 ing roof, the dormer windows, the spotless 
 bare floor, the pale yellow painted walls, the 
 wardrobe made of thirteen hooks suspended 
 from a board to which a cretonne curtain was 
 attached, the twelve-inch shelf for books, 
 the china candlestick. The soul of ascetic old 
 New England breathed from all the quaint 
 furnishings, and the newcomer had never 
 seen the like before. 
 
 " I shall love it," she said, wiping her eyes 
 in her laughter ; and she bestowed a caress- 
 ing pat on her thin white counterpane.
 
 THE COXING OF THE TIDE IS 
 
 II 
 
 JL HE twilight of early morning lay over the 
 sea when the swish of the waves on the rocks 
 roused the newcomer from sleep. Half wak- 
 ing, but with eyelids closed, she strove to 
 win her way back to the beautiful dream 
 that was escaping. It had fashioned her to 
 herself as a winged thing skimming the sur- 
 face of the water with motion swifter than 
 that of gulls ; and the wings were not made 
 for mere flying, but sensitive, full of vision, 
 they let the color and beauty and motion in 
 for a moment of brief rapture. When the 
 glory faded, she crept, in dressing-gown and 
 slippers, to the window toward the north, 
 where the moorland lay dusky green in the 
 dim light, and the far calls of waking birds 
 added distance to the stretches of tangled 
 bayberry bushes and scrub pine, then turned
 
 14 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 to the east, where the mystery of wide ocean 
 lay gray, expectant, under a sky of gray. 
 
 As she watched, down the dull, tossing sea 
 crept a ripple of gold, and the yellow rim of 
 the sun rose at the edge of the world. Glim- 
 mering softly came the light ; bright sparkles 
 of dew and wet gossamer webs shone from 
 the velvety green of the moorland, and a 
 longer pathway of light led across the sea. 
 The girl at the window was on her knees, 
 and her dark head w r as bowed when the glory 
 reached it and rested there. 
 
 There was an unusual calm in the dining- 
 room of the Emerson Inn that morning, a 
 portentous, smiling surface calm that hid the 
 profound agitation of the depths. It was 
 not for the well bred to show excitement for 
 trivial cause, and they did not. The conver- 
 sation ran along the usual lines : pale hints 
 of metaphysic floated out upon the summer 
 breeze, and all the air was rife with quotations 
 from the poets and bits of literary criticism. 
 Only once was the curtain of reserve rent in
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 15 
 
 twain, and that when George Eliot was the 
 ostensible theme. 
 
 "I noticed that her handkerchiefs were 
 bordered with black," said the Lady from 
 Wilmington, who was absent-minded. The 
 Lady from Boston delicately plunged into 
 the breach, pretending that she had not un- 
 derstood this bit of mental aberration. 
 
 " But in the case of Tito, you know, the 
 author is hardly fair. She hounds him 
 down the road to ruin in order to prove a 
 moral thesis. A certain lack of spiritual in- 
 sight "- 
 
 Here the door was flung open and the 
 broken sentence remained unfinished, for a 
 vision entered. Clad all in diaphanous white 
 that fluttered as she walked, her dark head 
 rising daintily like a flower from its sheath, 
 came the stranger of yesterday, the dull blue 
 of the wall paper throwing face and motion 
 into fine relief. She paused in hesitation, 
 vainly looking about for a head waiter, for 
 supper had been served in her room the night
 
 16 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 before, and she did not know at which table 
 to take refuge. Presently the slim, spectacled 
 district schoolmistress who waited on the 
 three tables nearest the door, entered with 
 a plate of Boston brown bread in her hand, 
 and greeted the newcomer with the air that 
 terrified tardy urchins at school. 
 
 " You will find a seat there," she remarked 
 severely, pointing with the forefinger of her 
 left hand ; the under tone of her voice added, 
 " You will stand in the corner half an hour 
 afterward for being late." 
 
 The dark eyes of the stranger rested on 
 her with an air of delicious surprise ; she 
 nodded gracefully and with twitching lips 
 sank into the chair. Thirty pairs of eyes 
 wandered, willy-nilly, her way, and many a 
 sentence drifted hopelessly away from its 
 verb, never to find it again. 
 
 " Grape-nuts," demanded the schoolmis- 
 tress peremptorily, " or pettijohn ? " 
 
 The Lady from Wilmington interrupted 
 the answer with a friendly good-morning,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 17 
 
 and the waitress frowned, she was accus- 
 tomed to prompt replies. 
 
 As the meal went on, the girl in the white 
 gown behaved under these unusual circum- 
 stances as any well-bred girl would under 
 ordinary circumstances ; " which proves," the 
 little Bostonian remarked to herself, " that 
 she is a lady." Of the tension in the air, the 
 newcomer, despite her calm face, was keenly 
 conscious, but, aware that in coming unchap- 
 eroned and alone to this strange spot, she 
 was outraging her own traditions much more 
 completely than those of her fellow guests, 
 she was quite cheerful in the face of encom- 
 passing criticism. It came to her in friendly 
 glances and in kind words; it vibrated 
 through the air in inquiries that were not 
 made. Just once the Lady from Cincinnati 
 ventured near the edge, as the soft vowels 
 of her new neighbor came to her ear. 
 
 " You are Southern,' I see." 
 
 " Yes," was the answer, made with a con- 
 tagious smile.
 
 " Have you ever been North before ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But you have been at the shore ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 There was a pause. Bits from Huxley, and 
 Mrs. Eddy, and Emerson floated through the 
 air. 
 
 " Are you literary ? " suddenly asked an 
 elderly lady who had not spoken before. 
 
 The smile got into the girl's voice and 
 into her eyes. 
 
 "I am afraid not," she drawled. "I can 
 read and write after a fashion." 
 
 In the dead silence that followed, the 
 schoolmistress stood bolt upright against 
 the wall, with her arms hanging stiffly at 
 her sides, and openly looked contempt. The 
 stranger realized that where the South would 
 have smiled the North only looked aghast. 
 
 " The schools are so poor in the South," 
 remarked the Lady from Boston kindly. 
 " Had ypu ever thought of the possibility of 
 a Northern college ? "
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 19 
 
 The waitress blushed and looked self-con- 
 scious ; she was to enter one in the fall. It 
 was the stranger's turn to look shocked. 
 
 " My family would never have permitted 
 that," she answered, wondering. 
 
 " I presume you have made it up by read- 
 ing," suggested the Lady from Cincinnati. 
 " Do you read Ibsen?" 
 
 " Not if I can possibly escape," said the 
 stranger. 
 
 "Or Browning?" 
 
 The little look of wickedness that lurked 
 always behind the veiled sadness of her eyes 
 leaped to the surface. 
 
 " Browning," she murmured, " Browning ? 
 I have heard the name, but " Here she 
 stopped, penitent. These moments of mis- 
 chievous girlhood that now and then came 
 rippling into her mat urer years always left 
 her with a sense of regret. 
 
 Horror smote the room ; no one ordered 
 any more food, for desire failed. Conversa- 
 tion flagged, and one by one the guests
 
 slipped away, leaving the daughter of the 
 South sitting helplessly between a cup of 
 pale brown coffee and a generous slab of 
 dark brown bread. She touched -the sodden, 
 resisting surface of the latter with her fork, 
 delicately, and retreated, to answer the call 
 of the sea, whose sun-flecked waters gleamed 
 from far through the open windows. Outside 
 she forgot : forgot her hunger, and the hard 
 little bed which had seemed devised as a 
 punishment for sin ; forgot her great trunks 
 and the thirteen hooks suspended humor- 
 ously, it seemed to her, from the board. Had 
 all these pink wild roses bloomed here yes- 
 terday? she asked herself, as she saw them 
 stretching in masses along the cliff, broken 
 by gray, lichen-grown rock, by the fresh 
 fronds of young sumac, and by dark juniper 
 with its new shoots as pale as green sea foam. 
 Surely they must have been here, and the 
 tangled blackberry vines must have been 
 growing in this same wild way, and the fra- 
 grance must have been then as sweet as
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 21 
 
 now, but she had not known it, forgetting all 
 things near in her escape to the vastness of 
 the sea. She climbed again over the rocks, 
 dressed most inappropriately, as the spec- 
 tators from the piazza truthfully remarked, 
 and hid herself for the entire morning in a 
 deep cleft where she could see and hear and 
 feel. The glorious, oncoming great green 
 waves broke rhythmically below her as the 
 tide came in, and they brought a sense of 
 the washing of old sorrow out of the soul. 
 Listening to their mighty beating on the 
 rocks, she paused in reverent wonder, mur- 
 muring : 
 
 " To think that I never knew before that 
 the earth is set to music ! " 
 
 There was consternation at one o'clock 
 when the stranger failed to appear at dinner. 
 
 " She is certainly erratic," remarked an 
 elderly spinster, who was undoubtedly Some- 
 body from Somewhere. 
 
 " But is n't she a beauty ! " said the young 
 woman with pale brown hair. " I 've never
 
 22 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 seen such glorious eyes, and her mouth looks 
 as if she had stolen it from some old picture." 
 
 It was the Lady from Cincinnati who 
 voiced, in a whisper, the long-suppressed 
 criticism of the assembly. 
 
 " / think that we should be a little care- 
 ful. In all the years I have been here I 've 
 never seen anything that looked improper." 
 
 The Lady from Boston bravely took up 
 the glove thus thrown down ; there had been 
 many an encounter between these two. 
 
 " It seems to me that we ought to make 
 her one of us. It* is evident from what she 
 said this morning about Browning " the 
 voice sank a little here " that she is very 
 ignorant. We could do a great deal for her 
 this summer by guiding her thought into 
 right channels and suggesting standards." 
 
 The stranger, coming in from the rocks 
 sunburned, disheveled, with eyes alight with 
 life and fire, heard the last sentence of this 
 conversation as the guests strolled out into 
 the hall.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 23 
 
 " Surely," the Lady from Cincinnati was 
 saying (she was accustomed to the last word), 
 " unless something were wrong that girl 
 would have registered by this time. She has 
 clothes enough for an actress, and beauty 
 enough to excite suspicion anywhere." 
 
 A dimple quivered in the newcomer's left 
 cheek. She slowly crossed the hall, and, 
 taking up the public pen, wrote her name 
 in the register with a generous scrawl. The 
 dark e}^es were full of mischief as she went 
 upstairs to make ready for her late dinner ; 
 but the look changed to apprehension as she 
 thought of facing the sternest of maids. 
 Downstairs the Lady from Wilmington, care- 
 lessly approaching the open page, read half 
 aloud : " Miss Frances Wilmot, Richmond, 
 Virginia." 
 
 " Miss Frances Wilmot," gasped the reader. 
 " Wilmot is a great name in Virginia, a very 
 great name indeed." 
 
 That afternoon the Lady from Boston, 
 still ignorant of the stranger's name and
 
 24 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 address, openly adopted her, spreading over 
 her the protection of her dove-gray wings. 
 She showed her all her pet crannies in the 
 rocks ; she gently suggested as the girl's 
 muslin flounces caught on bits of flinty 
 stone that a short tweed skirt would be 
 useful. 
 
 " We do not dress much here, my dear," 
 she said ; and the Southern girl involuntarily 
 glanced at her new friend's cotton blouse 
 and serge skirt, with a feeling that the re- 
 mark was in some way tautological. 
 
 Gently the little lady led the conversation 
 into improving paths, incidentally alluding 
 to lectures that she had heard, and to reading 
 courses that she had put herself through. 
 The girl listened to it all, and, though now 
 and then her rebellious lips would twitch 
 with amusement, her eyes were soft with a 
 sense of the kindness shown. Sometimes, 
 when the speaker herself felt that the at- 
 mosphere was growing too oppressive intel- 
 lectually, she glided into anecdotes of the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 25 
 
 countryside, to be rewarded by a sudden 
 flash of keen interest in her listener's eyes, 
 for all human story was dear to the girl. 
 
 " This is such a rare bit of country ; the 
 summer people have not found it out, and if 
 they had, they could not come. There are 
 some great estates left about here, and 
 people who have held the land more than 
 two hundred years live on them. Did you 
 notice a large, white colonial house with a 
 stone gateway just beyond the turning as 
 you came in ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered the Southern girl. 
 
 " That is the Warren place ; it is very 
 beautiful, and it is very, very old. The origi- 
 nal Paul Warren came over in 1645 from 
 Devonshire with a single servant from his 
 father's house, and he worked and cleared 
 the forest and fought the Indians until a 
 great tract of land was given him by the 
 Crown for special services, thousands of 
 acres. It has been an important family ever 
 since, and the present owner still lives here,
 
 26 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 though he spends his winters in Boston with 
 his wife. He has a brother who stays here 
 all the time, Mr. Peter Warren, an extremely 
 eccentric character. Joining the Warren 
 place is the old Bevanne estate. Look, and 
 you can see the ragged locust trees just over 
 the top of the little hill. The Bevannes are 
 another old family, but one that has grown 
 poor, perhaps fortunately for us, for they 
 sold Mr. Phipps the land on which the Emer- 
 son Inn is built, and but for them we might 
 never have known this lovely bit of shore. 
 The son of that family is a college professor 
 somewhere. Oh, it is very good stock in both 
 cases ; " and the little Lady from Boston, 
 who knew good stock and was of it, drew 
 her protegee away to see a special bed of 
 wild pink honeysuckle which had been her 
 delight for seven consecutive years, and for- 
 got old families for a time. 
 
 When they came back, breathless from 
 climbing a steep bit of rock, they found a 
 group assembled on the piazza round an odd
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 27 
 
 little man in a white flannel suit and Panama 
 hat. Out of the queer, wizened, wrinkled 
 face, deep-set blue eyes shone with one of the 
 lesser orders of intelligence, and the motions 
 of face and hands betokened a mind cease- 
 lessly, aimlessly alert. He was talking rapidly, 
 and the assembled hearers bent their heads 
 with the usual deference of spinsterhood for 
 man, however small. 
 
 " There is Mr. Peter Warren now ! " 
 exclaimed the Lady from Boston. " Shall I 
 present him to you? " 
 
 " Don't, don't interrupt him," begged the 
 girl, lifting a warning hand, and the two 
 stood unobserved on the steps while the shrill 
 voice went on. 
 
 " Curious thing, heredity. Now I suppose 
 you think you know all about it, but you 
 can't, possibly. Nobody does who does n't 
 know me." 
 
 " Indeed," said an amused voice. 
 
 " Fact," asserted Mr. Peter Warren, slap- 
 ping his knee. " Listen ! " and his voice sank
 
 28 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 to a mysterious whisper. " I am different from 
 all other people who breathe. You will say 
 that a man is the sum of his ancestors, that 
 is, the blood, nerves, and brain he has inher- 
 ited from them all are intermingled. He is 
 no one of them ; he is the result of all. A cer- 
 tain balance is kept because the different in- 
 gredients counteract one another. Now hear 
 this : / am all my ancestors in succession. 
 No drop of blood, no nerve fibre that I have 
 inherited from any one of them is mingled 
 with any other. When one personality rules 
 me it rules me completely, and I am always 
 at the mercy of the ancestor who enters me 
 last. How do I know ? From the complete 
 contrariety of my impulses. Why, when I 
 was a child, would I be lying one minute on 
 the floor, smiling and happy, the next, biting 
 in fury and screaming ?" 
 
 " Were you ? " asked an amazed feminine 
 voice. " I cannot imagine it." 
 
 He nodded solemnly. " Once, when I was 
 a youngster, I remember spending two hours
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 29 
 
 nursing a hurt blue-bottle fly. I was my mo- 
 ther then, I think, and she was one of the 
 saints of the earth. That very morning I 
 went out and killed my pet dog. Something 
 drove me to it, many people would say it 
 was the devil ; I say it was my great-great- 
 grandfather Warren, who was rather a brute. 
 That murderous impulse, which I remember 
 as perfectly as if it had come to-day, was 
 simply his spirit entering in. Then there is 
 my my taste for good wine ; I can no more 
 help that than I can help having two arms and 
 two legs. It was settled for me long before I 
 was born. In fine," he concluded, with a the- 
 atrical gesture of his arms, " I am not the re- 
 sultant of my ancestors : I am their victim. 
 How else," and he touched his chest, "can 
 you account for the acts of this singular 
 mechanism which calls itself Peter Warren, 
 and whose acts seem so illogical interpreted 
 in the narrower way?" 
 
 In the impressive pause which followed 
 these words, the speaker caught sight of the
 
 SO THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 listeners standing on the steps, and rose with 
 a gallant bow. 
 
 " There is nothing so interesting as human 
 nature," he observed, smiling, as the Lady 
 from Boston murmured his name by way of 
 introduction. " And where does one know 
 human nature so well as in one's self? Lit- 
 tle, after all, is of supreme concern to man 
 except himself. Don't you think so ? " he 
 added, looking toward the girl. 
 
 The answer came quickly in her soft South- 
 ern voice. "I have seen many things that 
 would make me believe it." 
 
 Mr. Peter Warren very soon took his de- 
 parture, with many polite bows and graceful 
 little speeches. As his hostesses remarked 
 afterward, his manner belonged to the old 
 school. He must hasten home, he observed in 
 parting, for his brother was ill, very ill, and 
 might need him. A little chorus followed him 
 as he went strolling down the road with his 
 great cane. " Is n't he odd ! " said one. " Is n't 
 he original ! " said another. " Such interest-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE SI 
 
 ing theories ! " said a third. But the girl with 
 pale brown hair whispered lightly in Frances 
 Wilmot's ear, having seen the amazement in 
 the newcomer's eyes, " He 's just a harmless 
 sort of lunatic, / think." 
 
 It was late afternoon when they let her go, 
 and, escaping, she wandered along a path 
 at the top of the cliffs to a point where the 
 rocks, parting, left space for a kind of amphi- 
 theatre guarding a curving sand beach. Tall, 
 soft grass, chased by the sea wind, waved on 
 its steep slope ; and buttercups and dande- 
 lions, long of stem, nodded there. The girl 
 nestled down among the grasses, watching 
 the mighty actor, the sea, playing his eternal 
 play over the dark rocks beyond the beach ; 
 and she sighed deeply as for weariness, so 
 many different kinds of wonder had been 
 crowded into one day ! Wide and infinitely 
 blue the water stretched out before her, the 
 outermost rim of the sea meeting the pearly 
 blue of the sky in a line that seemed to ring 
 the world.
 
 32 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " No poet has told its beauty ; perhaps 
 no poet could," she murmured to herself. 
 " Rossetti's 
 
 As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue 
 Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea 
 
 is too much like the tracing of a graven tool 
 to let the sea's life in. Swinburne has caught 
 the color and the motion, but he could not 
 reach the soul of you. Oh, if Swinburne had 
 not been Swinburne, what sealike poems he 
 might have written ! " 
 
 Sunset came and found her there, watch- 
 ing the faint flush across the eastern sky, 
 and the golden light gleaming on one far 
 white sail, and on the nearer outspread 
 wings of one white gull. Twilight gathered, 
 and still she lingered, for long grasses touched 
 face and hand in friendly fashion ; cool damp 
 air gently caressed cheek and forehead, and 
 the soft, immemorial swish of the water 
 roused a sense as of something within her 
 beating back to the very beginning of time. 
 One by one along the shore, as darkness
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 33 
 
 deepened, golden lights gleamed out beyond 
 gray water and dim rocks, while all about 
 her hylas and softly singing creatures of 
 summer nights piped to the music of the 
 sea.
 
 S4 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 III 
 
 JL HE wide, old-fashioned hall of the Warren 
 house was open to the night, and through 
 the great double doors, flung open at each 
 end, the stars were shining. The breeze that 
 blew gently through, making the candles on 
 the mantel over the huge fireplace flicker, 
 brought with it murmurs of the shore, where 
 the waves were breaking heavily at the turn- 
 ing of the tide. The air was full of the soft 
 sounds of a summer night, the low, sweet 
 love -songs of unnumbered tiny creatures 
 calling to one another in the dark. Scarcely 
 louder, came from the bedroom at the left of 
 the hall the sound of whispered prayers, for 
 the master of the house lay dying in the great 
 four-posted mahogany bed, and his wife, 
 kneeling at the bedside with the single candle 
 on the little table flaming above her beauti-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 35 
 
 ful gray head, was reading prayers for the 
 visitation of the sick. The nurse sat silent in 
 the corner; there was nothing to be done 
 now, save wait the great inevitable moment. 
 Outside in the hall the son of the house was 
 walking softly up and down through the 
 darkness and the faint light of the wind- 
 blown candles ; his step was measured and 
 slow, with a suggestion of suppressed agi- 
 tation. The face, when the dim rays half 
 lighted it in the darkness, showed the deadly 
 calm that often covers, in strong natures, pas- 
 sionate excitement. Upon it the shadows of 
 night met the shadow of coming sorrow. 
 
 " Peace be to this house, and to all that 
 dwell in it," repeated the sweet, tremulous 
 voice of the kneeling woman. " Remember 
 not, Lord, our iniquities, nor the iniquities of 
 our forefathers ; spare us, good Lord, spare 
 thy people " 
 
 When the voice ceased, there was silence 
 in the house, save for the sick man's labor- 
 ing breath, and the faint melodies that came
 
 36 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 from out of doors. Paul Warren stopped 
 abruptly in his walk, looking out at the 
 golden stars that shone through the eastern 
 door, then at those that shone from the west, 
 with the wide darkness beyond, and his 
 expressive face changed with a sudden sense 
 of the likeness of all this to human life, the 
 little, roofed-in space between two infinites. 
 
 " Paul, come ; he wants you," said his 
 mother's voice in a quick whisper. 
 
 A swift spasm of pain passed over the 
 young man's face as he entered the death 
 chamber ; it was hard to witness the helpless 
 suffering of the strong. Propped on huge, 
 old-fashioned pillows lay his father, his grand 
 physique emphasizing the pathos of this 
 moment of supreme weakness. Head, arms, 
 and shoulders were of noble proportions, but 
 the eyes were dim and the great muscles 
 powerless. The face, with its bold forehead 
 and fine, deep eyes, was that of one who had 
 known the thick of the conflict; scars of 
 strong passions were visible ; there was also,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 37 
 
 not yet relaxed, a certain dominant control 
 of the firm mouth, partly hidden under the 
 flowing gray beard. 
 
 " Paul ! " murmured the dying lips. " Is 
 that Paul ? " 
 
 " Yes, father." The young man's voice 
 was less steady than that of the older one. 
 
 John Warren's wasted eyelids were lifted, 
 as far as he could lift them, and there was 
 silence, while father and son looked at each 
 other. In the awfulness of the moment the 
 veils of life were drawn away ; even in this 
 supreme hour the two, who had said so 
 little and had felt so much, shrank from 
 the exposure as their naked souls met face 
 to face. It was only for an instant, for the 
 sense of slipping, slipping, left no time for 
 pause, and the shyness of a lifetime was 
 broken. 
 
 " Paul," came the broken voice, " take 
 care of your mother." 
 
 The young man knelt and laid his hand 
 upon his father's ; despite a profound affec-
 
 88 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 tion there had not been so much of a caress 
 between these two for years. 
 
 " I will," he answered, in a voice whose 
 very strength betrayed its weakness. 
 
 " I have n't always made out 
 to be myself," came the faltering voice of 
 the sick man ; but his wife was on her knees 
 by his side, sobbing, with her face buried in 
 the bed-clothes. 
 
 " Oh yes, you have, you have ! " she cried, 
 with that tender mendacity with which we 
 meet the failures of the dying and the dead. 
 
 The emotional strain of the situation was 
 too much for the man who was finding his 
 way to death's door. His grim sense of 
 humor had never left him in life ; it did not 
 leave him now. 
 
 " Keep your Uncle Peter here as 
 long as you can stand it, and let him 
 talk -- about himself as -- much as he - 
 wants to." 
 
 A gleam came into Paul's eyes. These 
 two had never yet seen the day when they
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 39 
 
 could not smile together ; they smiled to- 
 gether for the last time now, for a faint 
 flicker passed over the dying man's face and 
 was reflected in the son's. 
 
 " I will," he promised, pressing his father's 
 hand, " and I will listen." 
 
 The kneeling woman trembled with a lit- 
 tle shiver of non - comprehension that had 
 often come over her in listening to her hus- 
 band and her son. 
 
 " Be a good boy," the fading lips said, and 
 there was a touch of pressure from the weak 
 old hand. Paul Warren gave one great dry 
 sob. 
 
 " And fight fight Bevanne." 
 
 " Oh, John," moaned his horrified wife, 
 lifting her face from the sheet that was wet 
 with her tears, " not now ! Don't talk like 
 that ! " 
 
 A wave of color swept over the dying 
 man's face ; the muscles of his arms swelled 
 a little, and the veins of his forehead, so 
 sunken a minute before, knotted for a mo-
 
 40 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 ment almost in the old way ; then the blood 
 receded, leaving them more hollow than be- 
 fore. 
 
 " Yes, fight him, watch out for him 
 and all his brood. They are slippery 
 as rattlesnakes. I wanted to have it 
 out with him before I went." 
 
 " But, John," pleaded Mrs. Warren, " he 
 is dead ; he has been dead twenty years." 
 
 Her husband's eyes looked questioningly 
 at her. 
 
 " So he is, I keep forgetting. Look 
 out for the young one then. Young 
 rattlesnakes are just as poisonous as 
 old ones." 
 
 A great sense of wonder swept over Paul 
 Warren at this sudden revelation of hatred 
 which had smouldered, unknown to him, in 
 his father's breast for all these years, and 
 with it came envy of the nature that could 
 hate in this strong way. 
 
 "Don't think of such dreadful things 
 now," begged Emily Warren. " Do you
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 41 
 
 know, do you understand, John, where you 
 are? That you are dying?" The waver- 
 ing voice broke into sobs. 
 
 " I know, Emily," said the old man simply. 
 " I am not afraid." 
 
 "Are you sure ? " she pleaded, "I have 
 sometimes been fearful, you are so irregular 
 about going to church, are you sure you 
 believe in God?" 
 
 " Yes," said John Warren grimly from his 
 pillow. " Who would n't that had any 
 sense ? " 
 
 Hardly knowing what he did, Paul Warren 
 flung open the windows of the room. Some- 
 where, long ago, he had read of a people 
 who set doors and windows wide that the 
 souls of the dying might be set free to join 
 the great procession of the dead, always 
 sweeping, sweeping through the air. To the 
 tensely strained ears it almost seemed as if, 
 through the murmur of wind and of sea, he 
 could hear the coming of that great train ; 
 and at the centre of his being was a bewil-
 
 42 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 dered sense of great doors opened wide, at 
 whose threshold he paused, shrinking, unable 
 to go farther. Suddenly, with a bound and 
 a rush, a huge dark object came leaping into 
 the room. Mrs. Warren screamed aloud in 
 terror, and even Paul started, for his tear- 
 dimmed eyes refused to do him service ; but 
 the dying man smiled feebly on his pillow. 
 
 "It's only Robin," he said, weakly 
 lifting up a hand and groping blindly for the 
 familiar touch. A minute later the great 
 collie's head was lying in it, the dog's heart 
 beating in quick throbs as he whimpered out 
 his joy at finding him from whom he had so 
 long been shut away. A broken rope at his 
 throat showed how mighty were the bonds 
 he could break for love of the master who 
 lay dying. 
 
 " Take him away, Paul," said Mrs. War- 
 ren, who stood trembling. 
 
 Paul shook his head ; he could not do it 
 while that look of satisfaction was on his 
 father's face. The candles flickered and sput-
 
 tered ; they, too, were burning low. The 
 young man shaded his eyes with his hand, 
 for the pain of looking had grown intoler- 
 able, and so they waited, at the ebbing of 
 the tide. 
 
 A rough, bearded face appeared shortly 
 after at the window, and a great voice whis- 
 pered : 
 
 " Is Robin here ? He 's broke loose." 
 
 " Come and take him away," said the mis- 
 tress of the house. 
 
 Tiptoeing, the man entered the room and 
 laid his hand on the dog's collar. It was An- 
 drew Lane the second, the farmer who had 
 charge of the place. 
 
 " Come, Robin ; come, Robin," he said, 
 gently pulling at the rope. 
 
 A low growl was the result, becoming 
 louder and more menacing as the man held 
 on. The dog's head lay still in his master's 
 grasp, and into the animal's eyes came a 
 dangerous gleam, breaking their soft love- 
 light. Andrew fell back, dropping the rope.
 
 44 
 
 " Go, Robin," begged the mistress. 
 
 The great beast did not stir. 
 
 " Go out, Robin," said Paul Warren 
 sternly ; the dog only growled. 
 
 Then the sick man moved, and his breath 
 came in quick gasps. 
 
 " Go, Robin," he commanded, raising his 
 head; then he fell back and died. 
 
 The dog slunk broken-heartedly out into 
 the hall, obeying the last command he was 
 ever sure was right ; brushed, growling, past 
 the doctor, who had come too late, and ran 
 out into the darkness. 
 
 An hour later Paul Warren was again 
 pacing the great dark hall, while subdued 
 sounds came from his father's chamber, where 
 the last services were being done for the 
 dead. Weeping, through the dusk, came the 
 old colored cook, Aunt Belinda, her hands 
 full of red roses with their leaves damp with 
 dew. 
 
 " Now, Mas'r Paul, you go 'long and rest, 
 and don't you take it so hard," she said in
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 45 
 
 her deep, rich voice. " I just goin' in to lay 
 dese by old Mas'r. He didn't care nuffin 
 fur 'em when he was alive, but I reckon he 
 knows better now ; " and she passed on in a 
 glow of color to the death chamber. 
 
 A poignant sense of encompassing mys- 
 tery, and of the life that was quick all about 
 in the cool night air, shot through him as 
 swift pain. Lifting his eyes now and then, 
 as he walked, with his head bent and his 
 hands clasped behind him, he saw a splendid 
 white moth flutter in at the western door, 
 and, flying uncertainly, float out toward the 
 great stars in the east. The young man 
 watched it with passionate question and 
 wonder and grief written on his face, mak- 
 ing it even more of an enigma than it had 
 been before.
 
 46 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 IV 
 
 J. CERTAINLY am surprised," said Uncle 
 Peter cheerily one morning, as he ate his 
 oatmeal from a blue Japanese bowl with an 
 old-fashioned silver spoon marked " A ; " "I 
 certainly am surprised. I always expected to 
 go first, with my heart weakness. Now, your 
 father had nothing the matter with his heart, 
 had he ? If he had, I never knew it ; but 
 then, John kept everything pretty close." 
 
 " Not so far as I know," answered Paul 
 from behind his newspaper, wondering how 
 soon his mother would come down and break 
 up this tete-a-tete. 
 
 "I got it from my great-grandmother 
 Anne," pursued Uncle Peter, laying his hand 
 upon his heart, " that, and my love of beauty, 
 and this set of silver spoons. That sideboard 
 was hers, too. She gave it to my father and
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 47 
 
 he left it to John, as he did nearly every- 
 thing. Now John is dead and it is all yours. 
 Well, well, well ! And it seems only yester- 
 day that you were in knickerbockers." 
 
 He bestowed a congratulatory smile upon 
 his nephew, who scowled and held the news- 
 paper before his face. Even Uncle Peter 
 should know better than this ! It was only a 
 week since John Warren had been laid to 
 rest in the little family cemetery by the sea, 
 and to his son the sense of possession in turf 
 and tree and wide shore line brought keen- 
 est hurt. 
 
 " Don't want to talk, eh ! " said the older 
 man smilingly, as he sat with his head tipped 
 a little to one side and watched his nephew. 
 " Now, I always do ; get that from my grand- 
 father on mv mother's side, Peter Finch. I 
 j 
 
 was named for him, and inherited his socia- 
 bility ; queer nobody else did." 
 
 The young man read on, and Uncle Peter 
 chattered to the coffee pot, while the June 
 sunlight streamed in through the rose vines,
 
 48 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 now in deep red bloom, shading the windows 
 toward the east, and across the dewy grass of 
 the lawn, where elm and pine cast shadows, 
 always longest in early morning. It was 
 a large room, with paneled walls and high 
 ceiling, and all its furnishings were in keeping 
 with its long lines. At one side stood a huge 
 mahogany sideboard, filled with old blue 
 china ; an enormous mahogany sofa stretched 
 halfway across one end of the room ; the 
 dining-table, of the same dark wood, daintily 
 polished so that it reflected the faces of the 
 two men as they bent over it, was massive 
 and unwieldy, as were the chairs at its side. 
 Even the plates and the tablespoons seemed 
 larger than human use requires; yet the 
 room, with all that it contained, had a cer- 
 tain dignity, and bore witness to the strength 
 of the race, with its love of strong things. 
 Two or three badly painted ancestral por- 
 traits in tarnished gilt frames upon the walls 
 reflected, almost in despite of the painter, 
 something of the family character ; and Paul
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 49 
 
 Hollis Warren, seen in full light, seemed a 
 not unworthy inheritor of the family traits 
 and possessions. He was a tall man, slender 
 and sinewy, with quiet movements and firm- 
 lipped mouth. Nothing save the sudden flash 
 of the dark gray eyes, or the wistful look 
 that sometimes crept into them, betrayed the 
 drama of an inner life. Generations of Puri- 
 tan self-control and self-repression had left 
 their stamp upon the fine, thin face, young 
 but worn by the elder experiences of the race, 
 and wearing a melancholy seriousness which 
 was broken now and then by a cynic mirth- 
 fulness akin to tears. 
 
 It was only Uncle Peter who was out of 
 harmony with the character of things in the 
 great dining-room. Seated in his massive- 
 armed chair, he suggested a figure of a man 
 done, with a touch of caricature, in porcelain 
 or in sugar candy. 
 
 " Looks like the play doughnut you makes 
 sometimes for the chillen wen you tia'd of 
 makin' rale doughnuts," once said Aunt Be-
 
 linda, the colored cook. " Like 's not that 's 
 what the Lo'd done with the Warrenses wen 
 he got tia'd of makin' rale Warrens." 
 
 Uncle Peter rose, and, going to the side- 
 board, produced a tall bottle, from which he 
 poured a quantity of fluid into a glass. This, 
 mixed with a small amount of water, he 
 drank off slowly, with much smacking of his 
 thin lips. 
 
 " Indigestion, Paul," he explained apolo- 
 getically. " Something I believe you never 
 have. A drop of whiskey does me a world of 
 good ; it was born in me, you know ; came 
 down from my great-great-grandfather War- 
 ren, your great - great - great - grandfather, 
 you know." 
 
 " From all I 've heard," said Paul Warren, 
 looking up, "it would be just as well to let 
 my great - great - great - grandfather Warren 
 die out." 
 
 " Impossible ! " said Uncle Peter from the 
 sideboard, shaking his finger at his nephew. 
 "You'll discover some day that you can't
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 51 
 
 let your ancestors die out, and wherever you 
 go, you will find they have been there be- 
 fore you. Now great-great-grandfather War- 
 ren led a gay life ; I 've a streak of that in 
 me ; I wish to goodness you had ! I wish 
 you would brighten up the old place, now 
 it 's yours, and bring gay young people here, 
 the ( sound of revelry by night,' you know, 
 and all that. Come, boy, you 're twenty- 
 seven, or is it twenty-nine ? and if you 
 are ever going to be young you'd better 
 begin. I can't bear to see you waste your 
 days in that library and on the shore with 
 your gun." 
 
 Study of ancestral traits was the occupa- 
 tion of Uncle Peter's life. His was not the 
 vulgar pride which plumes itself on family 
 possessions, or even on honorable achieve- 
 ments of a long line of forbears ; to Uncle 
 Peter had been given an abiding interest in 
 the transgressions of those gone before him, 
 in their gloomy mood, their wavering be- 
 tween good and ill. None escaped him, from
 
 52 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 the original Paul Warren, who had tamed 
 the wilderness and had built by the sea the 
 old stone house with long, sloping roof and 
 mullioned windows, down to Mr. Peter's own 
 father, James Francis Warren, who had 
 erected the great house in which his son 
 survived him so comfortably. There were 
 old yellow records, old letters, old tales, from 
 which his imagination could suck a gentle 
 melancholy. Sure it was that the family suc- 
 cesses and honors had induced anything but 
 a joyous temper. Even the luckless ancestor 
 chosen by Uncle Peter to play the part of 
 scapegoat for his own shortcomings, great- 
 great-grandfather Warren, had not been al- 
 together happy in his sins ; and James Fran- 
 cis Warren, who had made a thing of beauty 
 of this great estate, that his descendants 
 might dwell there forever, transforming its 
 broad acres into park land and meadow that 
 almost matched in beauty the far-off Devon 
 home ; who had died with an air of achieve- 
 ment, gazing up at the high ceiling which he
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 53 
 
 had built, and reflecting that his son John 
 was even at that minute sitting in Congress, 
 had felt secretly conscious of inner lack. In 
 matters of this world they had certainly 
 prospered, these Warrens, both in the main 
 line and in the minor branches that had set- 
 tled in the neighboring towns or had moved 
 out to start new colonies in the West. As a 
 general rule, they had reassuring bank ac- 
 counts, and safes well lined with bonds and 
 mortgages, and yet few of the men who 
 told their descent in direct line from Paul 
 Warren the elder had known content. Their 
 pent-up energy needed a wider scope than 
 it had ever known since those earliest days 
 when the original settler had tamed the 
 wilderness ; and the mere care of the estate 
 meant too slight endeavor for the strong- 
 backed, strong-limbed, strong-minded, hardy 
 race. The early struggles over, of fighting 
 for mere existence, an eager force of mind 
 and body began to turn upon itself, eating 
 into its own substance, and intensity of inner
 
 54 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 life had led to vivid experiences both of good 
 and of ill. There had been saints in the 
 family, and sinners too ; even crime had not 
 been unknown among them, and tradition 
 told of one neighbor, said to be a remote an- 
 cestor of the Bevannes, shot down in a fit of 
 hot anger whose cause had been long forgot- 
 ten, but whose effects lived on in smoulder- 
 ing enmity, now and then fanned into live 
 flame. It was possibly a recognition of dan- 
 ger in the blood which had induced among 
 the Warrens, generations ago, a tendency 
 toward seclusion. Solitary, introspective, 
 apart, they lived within themselves, mating 
 for the most part with sweet, weak women, 
 who bent or broke under the stronger wills 
 of their husbands. Melancholia had become 
 a part of the family inheritance, and grand- 
 father, father, and son, shutting themselves 
 away from life, had built up a world of false 
 proportions, where great issues sometimes 
 went unnoticed, and trifles bore unusual 
 weight. They grew morbidly sensitive and
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 55 
 
 self-centred, missing the even measure of 
 things held by those who share a larger life 
 than their own ; yet most of them were good, 
 if rather silent, servants of church and of 
 state, high-tempered, it may be, but high- 
 minded also, contemptuous of hypocrisy even 
 when shown in polite lies, and of all but sim- 
 ple and honest action. 
 
 It had come to pass, for places grow in 
 time to wear the expression of the spirits who 
 inhabit them, that a look of sadness and of 
 melancholy settled down over the old War- 
 ren place. The low stone wall with its tall 
 gateway ; the curving drive, somewhat grass- 
 grown now ; the undipped turf, where long 
 grass waved after it should have been cut ; 
 the wide door entering the great hall where 
 the tall clock ticked slowly on the stairs, had 
 a look of isolation. It was so still in this gen- 
 eration, when there was but one child in the 
 house, that it had an air of having been built 
 in primeval quiet, before earth's noises be- 
 gan. In certain corners the air seemed heavy
 
 56 THE. COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 with the morbid ideas of the dead inhabit- 
 ants ; and Uncle Peter had a fancy, as origi- 
 nal as it was convenient, that he knew places 
 in the house where sudden hope would seize 
 you, and others where irresistible passion 
 would tear your soul, driving you out, pow- 
 erless, to work its will. At least it was true 
 that all who entered the house either by 
 the marriage altar or by the gates of birth, 
 learned to wear the inward look of the War- 
 rens. Even the dogs caught the family tem- 
 per, and not Hamlet himself had greater 
 suffering of mind than had Robin Hood, the 
 collie, as he wandered the valley of inde- 
 cision, where his master had worn a path, 
 with doubting feet. 
 
 Yet John Warren had played a not inglo- 
 rious part in the history of the countryside. 
 After a somewhat wayward youth, he had 
 settled down to the study of the law, and had 
 pursued his work with the ease and calm of 
 a man whose toil is a pastime and not a means 
 of livelihood. He had made no professional
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 57 
 
 use of his knowledge, but, after being ad- 
 mitted to the bar, had played, against his will, 
 a prominent part in local politics, and had 
 reluctantly gone to Washington to represent 
 his district in Congress. No eloquence is 
 recorded of him ; the Warrens are a silent 
 race, with speechlessness often more potent 
 than words. One achievement only marked 
 his stay in the capital, he came home with 
 a bride, a frail, pretty Southern girl, whom 
 he loved with an ardor that puzzled and 
 sometimes terrified her. John Warren should 
 have married before he was thirty-two, his 
 neighbors said, when they saw the sadness 
 that settled down on the young wife's face. 
 She was but twenty-four, and unused to prob- 
 lems, and the family expression soon fastened 
 upon her. She missed the broad streets of 
 her native city, the crowded receptions, the 
 gay drives, the soft Southern vowels, and the 
 warm Southern sun. Only Aunt Belinda, 
 whom she had brought with her to her 
 Northern home, could console her when the
 
 58 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 passion of homesickness came ; and she used 
 to steal out to the kitchen at twilight, when 
 the day's work was done, to hear the rich 
 darky dialect, and to feel the comfort of that 
 presence which seemed to radiate all the 
 physical joyousness of life. 
 
 Year after year she watched the winter 
 snowfalls, and the melancholy thawing of 
 the snow ; she watched the coming of sum- 
 mer, with its growth of young grass and 
 tender grain, and all her hurt sense of lone- 
 liness went down to her son Paul, whom she 
 loved with a passion that was touched with 
 awe. The sea brought her no message of 
 beauty or comfort, and something of the 
 mystery of its dim horizon-line had crept 
 into the soul of this boy, whose thoughts 
 were not her thoughts, and whose moods 
 she was not able to divine. 
 
 She came late into the breakfast room this 
 morning, a gracious figure with soft gray 
 hair, wearing a black morning gown that fell 
 in ample folds about her feet. There were
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 59 
 
 half tears in her sweet blue eyes, home of 
 gentle feelings if not of keen thoughts, as 
 her son rose to draw back her chair and bent 
 to kiss heV. 
 
 "Letters for you, mother," said Paul, 
 gathering a sheaf of them from the table. 
 
 " Letters? " she echoed, as if startled that 
 any outside thing should intrude upon her 
 now; and she adjusted delicately a pair of 
 gold-bowed eyeglasses, turning the envelopes 
 over and over for inspection. The one that 
 was the least easy to understand, addressed 
 in a fine, old-fashioned feminine handwriting, 
 and bearing a Southern postmark, she opened 
 first. 
 
 My dear Emily Parkes Warren (it began), 
 If by any chance you remember me after 
 these years of silence, there will be no need 
 for me to explain that I am Amy Levine 
 Dearborn, and your fifth cousin, and that we 
 were school-children together in Washing- 
 ton forty years ago. However, it is not of
 
 60 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 myself that I would write, but of Eleanor 
 Mason's daughter. Surely you remember 
 Eleanor, who was going to be another 
 Mrs. Browning, but who married at nineteen 
 and was silent forever after ? Eleanor died 
 in May this year, and her only daughter has 
 run away. She is an impetuous girl, but very 
 spirited and bright ; her mother's death has 
 broken her heart, and Frances has gone 
 North, insisting on being alone, and refusing 
 to take even a maid with her. It seems that 
 her mother was once at a little inn on your 
 New England coast, and the girl has fled 
 there to hide her grief in a spot that her 
 mother knew. The name of the place is the 
 same as that of your old home ; if you are 
 still there, can you look after her a little ? 
 Forgive me if I am asking too much ; it is 
 only for Eleanor Mason's sake that I venture. 
 Moreover, to know Frances will be reward 
 enough for any trouble. When you are ac- 
 quainted with her you will discover where 
 the poetry in her mother's soul has gone.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 61 
 
 Good-by, my dear Emily. Perhaps some 
 day it will be my good fortune to see you 
 again. 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 AMY LEVINE DEARBORN. 
 
 The gold-rimmed glasses dropped from 
 Mrs. Warren's eyes. 
 
 "Paul," she gasped, "Paul, is n't this ex- 
 traordinary ? Of course I want to see Elea- 
 nor Mason's daughter, but where can she 
 be?" 
 
 " Oh, at some place in the village, prob- 
 ably," answered her son. " You can find 
 her easily enough. I '11 ask the postmas- 
 ter." 
 
 " But what does she mean by saying that 
 when I know her I shall see where Eleanor's 
 poetry has gone ? Perhaps she has brought 
 it with her to read on the rocks." 
 
 Here Uncle Peter's shaky fist struck the 
 great table with as much force as he could 
 summon.
 
 62 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " By the bones of ray ancestors, that 's the 
 girl I saw the other day ! " 
 
 " Where ? " cried Mrs. Warren eagerly. 
 " What does she look like ? " 
 
 " She looks," answered Uncle Peter, who 
 also had his poetic, or at least his Byronic, 
 moments, " she looks like moonlight and star- 
 light. 'She walks in beauty' don't 
 
 you know ' like the night of - 
 cloudless climes and starry skies 
 and all - - that 's best of dark - 
 and bright meet in her aspect 
 
 and her eyes.' '
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 63 
 
 J_T was the first time that Eleanor Mason's 
 daughter had ever seen a garden which had 
 grown old by the sea. She wandered out 
 into it alone at the noontide of this June day, 
 for Mrs. Warren, who had coaxed the girl to 
 share the solitude of an occasion when her 
 son and Uncle Peter were both absent in the 
 city, was busy giving instructions to Aunt 
 Belinda, and had let her guest go free. It was 
 only yesterday that Mrs. Warren had driven 
 to the Emerson Inn to seek out the daughter 
 of her old friend, and had waited for her in 
 the green-and-gold reception room, wistful, 
 tremulous, her heart beating high with old 
 memories and with present shyness. Frances 
 Wilmot, entering, had paused on the thresh- 
 old, with a cloud upon her white forehead ; 
 the card told her nothing, she knew only
 
 64 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 that somebody had invaded her solitude. But 
 when the older woman rose and held out her 
 hands impetuously, as the sight of the girl's 
 face brushed away forty years of her life, 
 saying, " I was a friend of your mother, my 
 dear," Frances went to her and took her 
 hands, holding her face out to be kissed. To 
 the two it had seemed that they had a long 
 past to talk over ; and the young girl's eyes 
 grew dim at meeting her mother as a little 
 child. 
 
 She was strolling bareheaded down the 
 long paths, with her face turned slightly 
 upward that the sunlight might fall there, 
 and she was drinking deep of sea air, min- 
 gled with fragrance of sweet peas and of 
 tall yellow lilies. Who had made this en- 
 chanted garden, she was wondering, with 
 its high walls of stone that reached to the 
 brown rocks, beyond which the blue sea 
 rolled in ? It was guarded by spruce trees 
 and cedars, of deeper and softer green than 
 those farther inland, breaking the splendor
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 65 
 
 of its color where beds of red or yellow 
 roses lay. 
 
 It was the original Paul Warren, who, 
 with memories of his Devonshire home fresh 
 in his mind, had planned to make a garden 
 spot of this great space by the water, though 
 he had died, weary of fighting the wilder- 
 ness, before anything was planted there. His 
 children and grandchildren had broken the 
 sea-meadow into furrows and had planted 
 golden corn and spreading pumpkin vines 
 where tall reeds had grown and the soft 
 marsh grasses had waved in the wind. Fluffy 
 yellow chickens and small brown peeping 
 turkeys, escaping from yard or coop, had gone 
 pattering up and down the spaces where 
 bobolinks had been wont to sway on long 
 grasses. Blue blossoms of flax spread where 
 scarlet queen-of-the-meadow and small red 
 August lilies had grown. It was the wife of 
 the great-great-great-grandfather Warren of 
 reckless fame who had found consolation in 
 the long years of her widowhood in reclaim-
 
 66 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 ing a part of the space from vegetables and 
 giving it over to flowers. The beds nearest 
 the house, oval or oblong or star-shaped, 
 had been planned by her, although the white 
 picket fence that had guarded her treasures 
 was gone. 
 
 Of the reign of great-grandmother Anne, 
 who had been a lover of all beautiful things, 
 nothing remained save one ragged, sturdy 
 rose tree climbing over the southern wall of 
 gray-brown stone. James Francis Warren, 
 who had caused the walls to be built, had 
 carefully treasured this relic of the past, 
 training it away from its old wooden trellis 
 to new support. He, with tastes that were, 
 perhaps, a far-off echo of those of the first 
 Paul Warren's father, the country squire, had 
 extended the garden-space to the edge of 
 the sea, and had planted the old pear trees, 
 broken and knotted, that still wakened now 
 and then to life and put forth blossoms on the 
 May air. In this fruit garden which met the 
 space of flowers, peach trees and plum and
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 67 
 
 cherry stood side by side, with neglected cur- 
 rant and gooseberry bushes not far away. 
 Still a few luscious bits of fruit dropped 
 from the broken and crumbling limbs into 
 the tangled grass below, golden pear, or 
 rose-flushed peach, or plum with dim purple 
 bloom. 
 
 Generations of Warrens had played there 
 in childhood, climbing the apple trees, mak- 
 ing silken doll robes out of scarlet poppy 
 petals, and royal sceptres of sunflower stems; 
 generations of Warrens had paced the walks 
 to the slow beating of the tide on the rocks 
 beyond, dreaming their love dreams; and 
 generations of white-haired men and white- 
 haired women had tottered up and down 
 these paths, at the edge of eternity and of 
 the sea. And still, though half neglected, it 
 was full of all old-fashioned, lovely things, 
 yellow crocus and white in earliest spring, 
 and blood-red tulips later when the grass 
 sprang fresh and green ; gorgeous tiger lilies 
 and red poppies, larkspur, and candytuft, all
 
 68 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 sweeter in perfume, deeper in color, for the 
 breath of the sea air. 
 
 The girl who was walking idly through it 
 felt the long story that she did not know. 
 Song sparrows were twittering among the dim 
 blue berries of the cedars ; a great bumble- 
 bee was humming in a bush of old-fashioned 
 single roses, deep red, with golden stamens ; 
 and about it all flowed the melody of the sea. 
 Her feet kept time to the measure and to that 
 of some verses that would not be quiet : 
 
 I know a little garden close 
 Set thick with lily and red rose, 
 Where I would wander if I might 
 From dewy morn to dewy night, 
 And have one with me wandering. 
 
 And though within it no birds sing, 
 And though no pillared house is there, 
 And though the apple boughs are bare 
 Of fruit and blossom, would to God 
 Her feet upon the green grass trod 
 And I beheld them as before." 
 
 For her grief was ever present, though 
 wind and tide had begun, without her know-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 69 
 
 ledge, to set it to music with all the rest of 
 the world. 
 
 Wandering with no aim save to find the 
 spot where the breeze was freshest or the 
 fragrance most sweet, she came suddenly 
 upon an old man who was busily weeding 
 a bed of cinnamon pinks : it was the eldest 
 Andrew Lane. The hair beneath his sun- 
 browned hat was white as snow, as was the 
 beard that touched the dull blue of his shirt. 
 Hearing a footstep he looked up, turning 
 to the girl a face seamed with a thousand 
 wrinkles, and greeted her with a good-morn- 
 ing. 
 
 , " It is a very beautiful garden," said 
 Frances Wilmot tentatively ; this old man 
 looked as if he might have most interesting 
 things to say. . . 
 
 "I've seen wuss," he answered, weeding 
 again. "But this don't hev no care now. 
 I 'm gittin' pretty old." 
 
 "You ought to have somebody to help 
 you."
 
 " I don't want nobody to help me," he said 
 shrilly, " till I 'm planted myself. Belindy, 
 she helps about weedin', and we let the rest 
 
 go." 
 
 " Have you worked here long ? " asked the 
 girl, drawing nearer. 
 
 " Sence them walls was built," said the old 
 gardener, " and that 's sixty year ago. I 've 
 took care of the place ever sence, havin* 
 help, of course. Lord, in James Francis 
 Warren's day it was a garden : not an extry 
 leaf on anything, and every bush and tree 
 trimmed like a pinted beard." 
 
 " I like it a great deal better this way," 
 said the girl confidingly, " just half running 
 wild." 
 
 " Do you, now ? " said old Andrew Lane. 
 " That 's cur'us ; what fur ? " 
 
 " Oh," she answered lightly, " it looks as 
 if things had happened, and as if it were full 
 of meanings. There 's an air of mystery or 
 something about it." 
 
 The toothless smile of the old man's face
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 71 
 
 vanished, and a shrewd look crept into the 
 pale blue eyes under the sunken eyebrows. 
 
 " I don't know nothin' about no myst'ry," 
 he said sullenly, going back to his weeding 
 with vigor ; nor could she win any further 
 conversation from him, nor from his small 
 great-grandchild, Andy, who toddled after 
 the old man, in tiny overalls of yellow. 
 
 In the afternoon she went with Mrs. War- 
 ren about the great house, which, after the 
 fashion of earlier days, faced, not the sea, 
 but the highway. Outside, the young sum- 
 mer had touched its age to freshness: wis- 
 taria, still fragrant with clusters of late blos- 
 soms, climbed the tall white pillars, and the 
 long festoons of woodbine wore new, flushed 
 leaves and tendrils. Pale purple lilacs were 
 in bloom by the white southern wall, and 
 the faded blue-green blinds of the parlor win- 
 dows made a most lovely background for the 
 climbing white roses that had crept over 
 them and had fastened them permanently 
 open.
 
 " It is just like home, is n't it ? " said the 
 Southern girl. 
 
 " It has never seemed so to me," answered 
 the elder lady, puzzled, for home to her had 
 meant the gay life that had gone on in it. 
 
 The dimly lighted interior showed little 
 trace of springtime ; old furniture, old hang- 
 ings, suggested only the past. They paused 
 for a time in the library, whose worn leather 
 chairs bespoke long use, and whose great 
 bookshelves were filled with volumes that 
 revealed solid tastes and thoughtful minds. 
 
 " My son spends much of his time here. 
 He he writes," said Mrs. Warren apolo- 
 getically, for she was filled with a new 
 sense of the difference between Paul and 
 the gallant young heroes of the South. 
 He could do much if he only would to en- 
 liven the stay of this charming girl in the 
 North, but he cared little for women, and 
 less for young ones, and his mother sighed 
 softly. 
 
 " Please come into the garden again,"
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 73 
 
 pleaded Frances. " I cannot bear to be away 
 from it." 
 
 Mrs. Warren looked at her in wonder, but 
 said nothing, for in later years she had learned 
 more and more to stay silent until she un- 
 derstood. As she paced the old paths with 
 this girl at her side, it seemed to her that the 
 whole expression of the place changed. Tree, 
 flower, and vine took on softer and brighter 
 colors; the eerie sounds that had haunted 
 her ears grew almost joyous, and the old- 
 fashioned sailing boat, the Sea Gull, riding 
 the waves in the sheltered cove by the house, 
 seemed to tug at its moorings as with desire 
 to be free and to dance. 
 
 " Ought n't you to have your hat on, to 
 keep from spoiling your complexion ?" she 
 asked, with a sudden sense of responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 The girl's laugh rang out sweetly. " Young 
 women nowadays never think of their com- 
 plexions," she answered, and Mrs. Warren 
 frowned a puzzled little frown. Fewer and
 
 74 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 fewer people thought her thoughts or spoke 
 her language, as she grew older. 
 
 " This place must have been the greatest 
 joy to you," said Frances suddenly. 
 
 " It has been rather an anxiety," said 
 Mrs. Warren. " The gardener has grown so 
 old that he can work only a little and on 
 sunshiny days, and it all needs clipping and 
 trimming. Paul does not understand, and 
 says he likes it this way." 
 
 " It looks like a garden in a fairy story, 
 the one where Beauty met the Beast " 
 
 " I never read fairy stories," murmured 
 Mrs. Warren. 
 
 " Or the Garden of Hesperides, where 
 the golden apples grew." 
 
 " We have very few apples now, and only 
 red ones, though of course I know that is 
 not what you mean," observed the hostess 
 regretfully. 
 
 The conversation drifted over to Paul 
 Warren, who had come home by the four 
 o'clock train, and who was pacing his favor-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 75 
 
 ite garden path, hidden, close by the north 
 wall, by an arbor vitse hedge. If the truth 
 must be known, he had taken refuge there 
 to avoid his mother's guest. The girl's voice 
 startled him : melodious and full, it sounded 
 like hidden music along his nerves. There 
 were ripples of laughter in it, and soft lit- 
 tle murmurs of sadness ; and it played upon 
 him as fingers play upon keys. The fact 
 that it belonged to a woman did not inter- 
 est him ; it was as if he had discovered a 
 new art. 
 
 He waited until the sound of familiar 
 hoof-beats assured him that the guest was 
 being driven home in the old-fashioned fam- 
 ily .carriage, and then came out of his re- 
 treat, self-reproachful when he heard his 
 mother's laments that he had not come home 
 in time to meet the child of her old friend.
 
 76 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 VI 
 
 JLHE lowest ebb of the tide came in the 
 early afternoon, and the curving sand beach 
 that lay just beyond the Warren homestead, 
 like a sickle of pale gold cutting the blue 
 water from green grassy meadow, stretched 
 parched and dry in the glare of the summer 
 sun. Bird songs were hushed, but the low 
 hum of insects was on the hot air, and from 
 far, with an ironic sound as of cool water 
 retreating from thirsty need, came the rip- 
 ple of withdrawing waves. Paul Warren, 
 restlessly active in the languid air, was walk- 
 ing up and down the veranda, keeping pace 
 with grief, for step by step beside him he 
 seemed to hear the echo of the footfall that 
 had so often sounded with his own. Sud- 
 denly a soft nose was thrust into his hand 
 with a long, mournful whimper, and two
 
 great golden-brown eyes were lifted to his in 
 passionate entreaty : Robin Hood was still 
 hunting for his master. 
 
 " Poor old fellow ! " said Paul, patting the 
 upturned head, " I would give him back to 
 hunting you if I could." 
 
 The old dog sniffed anxiously at the young 
 man's coat and hands, then drew away and 
 gazed with eyes in which the look of en- 
 treaty was changing to one of deep reproach. 
 
 " It is something I do not understand any 
 better than you do, Robin, and yet I know 
 you don't believe me. You are saying to 
 yourself : ' Whose fault is it, then, if not 
 yours, and where have you hidden him 
 away?'" 
 
 Robin, as if assenting, walked away with 
 a low growl, and his young master, ever 
 quick of sympathy with dumb beasts, looked 
 after him with eyes that matched his own in 
 depth of puzzled sorrow. 
 
 Here Uncle Peter strolled out upon the 
 veranda, fresh and smiling, with a cigarette
 
 78 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 between his teeth, and under his arm a paper- 
 covered novel drawn from a large and varied 
 store which he had been accumulating for 
 more than forty years. With a swift move- 
 ment, Paul slipped into the library in time 
 to escape, and drew a sigh of relief at the 
 sight of the shelves where his beloved, silent 
 friends awaited him, and where sense and 
 spirit could rest in the mellow coloring of 
 old leather chairs and worn volumes. As he 
 loved for their solitude certain lonely parts 
 of the shore where his own best thoughts 
 seemed always to await him, he loved the 
 quiet of this spot ; and now, without opening 
 a book, he touched one after another with 
 his finger tips, Spinoza, Kant, Sir Thomas 
 Browne, the thinkers great and small whose 
 minds had kindled his own, almost fancying 
 that he felt a responsive pressure from the 
 leather-bound volumes. The old black-letter 
 romances and the illuminated missal in the 
 cabinet by the fireplace must surely share 
 his sense of loss, so great had been his
 
 father's pride in them ; and the worn copies 
 of Spencer and Huxley must miss the hands 
 that were gone. The cover of Darwin's " De- 
 scent of Man " was torn where Robin had 
 chewed it as John Warren went to sleep 
 in his chair one day, and Paul touched it 
 with gentle fingers, remembering. So they 
 had passed on, generation by generation, he 
 mused, leaving here upon the library shelves 
 a record of their tastes and of their callings, 
 like driftwood cast up by the sea. The set of 
 antique sermons had belonged to the min- 
 isterial ancestor ; the old dramas to one who 
 had a liking for written plays ; the " Specta- 
 tors " and " Ramblers " to his grandfather, 
 James Francis Warren; and here was he, 
 Paul, with his huge volumes of German phi- 
 losophy, his row of French essayists in their 
 yellow paper covers, and his abiding sense 
 of the world's lack of need of him. Softened 
 light came into the great room through the 
 half -closed shutters ; a golden bumblebee 
 wandered in on a ray of sunlight and had
 
 80 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 difficulty in finding his way out ; warm fra- 
 grance of all things blossoming in the gar- 
 den stole in on the breeze. The young man 
 dropped into a great leather-covered chair, 
 flung his arms down upon the table, over 
 some sheets of his own manuscript where the 
 ink had dried ten days ago, and buried his 
 face in them to rest. Here, and here only, 
 the awful sense of difference was gone, and 
 the quick and the dead were alike. Then, in 
 the silence, his mind began to travel the old 
 ways of question : what was it all for, the 
 bootless search, the suffering, the long think- 
 ing, and the pain? Surely there was but 
 small return for the great demands that life 
 made upon one's power to endure. 
 
 Slowly the shadowed days of all his life 
 came back to him ; the boyhood spent in the 
 gloomy house, where the long silences, his 
 mother's unspoken sadness, and Uncle Peter's 
 morbid fancies regarding the past had cast 
 a spell upon him ; and then the years of 
 study when he had grown from child to
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 81 
 
 man, coming home at each vacation to find 
 the old house absolutely unchanged. Through 
 the dull color of it all a sense of his father's 
 pride and interest in his son had run like a 
 thread of gold. It was he who had guided 
 the child's reading, giving him books un- 
 known to most boys of ten and of twelve ; 
 it was he who had sat quietly chuckling at his 
 son's comments on men and on things ; for 
 an insight into the ironies of life had come 
 to the lad too easily and too soon, and the 
 words of his tongue were as the fine prick- 
 ing of a delicately pointed weapon ; it was 
 he who had fostered the boy's gift for writ- 
 ing, coaxing the dark-haired youngster, who 
 had always an elusive look in his eyes, to sit 
 upon his knee and repeat the verses he had 
 written. Paul did it shyly, the color deep- 
 ening in his cheeks ; and even now he could 
 remember the thrill of joy that came when 
 his father patted him on the head and 
 praised him, for words of praise and caresses 
 had been few and far between. Sometimes
 
 82 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 the inherited mood of sadness had been 
 broken by charmed moments when sudden 
 enchantment visited him, and, surrendering 
 to the unconscious spell of warm sunshine 
 on fragrant flowers, or of the beat of a sum- 
 mer shower on the window-pane, he dreamed 
 rare dreams of happiness and of great 
 achievement. 
 
 Always Paul had loved the old house, 
 whose expression had settled early upon his 
 childish face. He liked its dark corners and 
 mysterious doorways, especially the awful 
 one leading to the garret, which he used to 
 pass at twilight, just to see if he dared, 
 glorying in the cold shivers that crept up 
 and down his back. He loved the ancestral 
 pictures in the parlor and above the wind- 
 ing stairs, where they hung with the corner 
 of each gilt frame touching the one next 
 higher. The faces that smiled and were 
 sweet appealed to him less than did certain 
 portraits wearing a melancholy and sin- 
 stricken look. One, which hung just above
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 83 
 
 the landing by the old clock, always terri- 
 fied him : it was his wicked great-great-great- 
 grandfather Warren, looking out from the 
 canvas with a dare-devil expression. Alone, 
 in the dark, Paul sometimes felt that scowl 
 close behind him, quite disembodied, and the 
 sharp hairs of the eyebrows seemed to prick 
 his neck as the phantom ancestor stealthily 
 pursued ; for the grotesque theories of Uncle 
 Peter had peopled passageway and chamber 
 with a terrible race, all the more real be- 
 cause invisible, forever lying in wait. Under 
 his conjuring tongue old mood and old trans- 
 gression became again alive and potent to 
 harm ; and that which was to him a species 
 of intellectual entertainment, as his imagin- 
 ative power met the challenge of the child's 
 deep eyes, and fabled further, became the 
 very warp and woof of the boy's thoughts 
 by day, and of his dreams by night. 
 
 In time the sheer fascination of story be- 
 gan to mingle with a questioning of good 
 and of ill, and he knew a different fear : that
 
 84 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 this sensual mouth, that cruel eye, among 
 the painted features, might come to be his 
 own. In one dim face on the library wall 
 supreme terror lay for him in the bulge of 
 the lip and the lines about the eyes; and, 
 dreaming for himself especial cause for stern 
 self-discipline, he grew into a tall lad of mor- 
 bid fancies, who had early begun to think of 
 himself as cursed by destiny to stand apart. 
 To stand apart ! That had been the key- 
 note of Paul Warren's life, through his school 
 years, through college, through his law study. 
 He had made his mark as a man of wide read- 
 ing and of literary power, shown chiefly in a 
 fine keenness of judgment, but his strength 
 of mind and of character had brought him 
 little comfort for the unexplained grief of 
 being ; and melancholy, which knows no 
 logic, had early gained a deep hold upon 
 him. Forming for himself an impossibly high 
 ideal of blameless conduct, he lashed him- 
 self mercilessly for failure to reach the super- 
 human, the man's self-criticism being imper-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 85 
 
 ceptibly tinged by the boy's belief in awful 
 hereditary impulse that might at any time 
 undo him unaware. Remote ancestral sins 
 and uncommitted sins of his own became, 
 in his long brooding, inextricably confused, 
 and so long had he walked with shadows that 
 the distinction between mist and headland 
 was no longer clear. Only this seemed plain, 
 that the great stream of human life was not 
 for him : birth he had shared with the rest 
 of the race ; death he must share ; but love 
 and marriage and dreams of happiness were 
 not his portion. Half in fear, half in shy- 
 ness, he shunned women ; and few ventured 
 beyond an interested scrutiny of the dark 
 face with the gleam of fire in the eyes, and 
 the occasional sensitive quiver of the lip. 
 Driven back upon a world of his own creating, 
 he lived with his books and his pen, the old 
 ironic sense of things constantly deepening, 
 as smothered passion and imaginative power 
 struggled vainly for expression. 
 
 That feeling of the profound irony of ex-
 
 86 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 istence was strong upon him at this moment, 
 as he thought of the quiet companionship 
 with his father by the open fire on winter 
 evenings, or on the veranda under the sum- 
 mer stars, and remembered the mound of 
 earth in the green cemetery, with the know- 
 ledge that there was nobody now who could 
 keep silence and understand. Then, vainly 
 brooding over the why and the wherefore of 
 human love and of loss, he grew dimly aware 
 of something tugging at pulse and nerve : 
 an overmastering desire to grasp this pro- 
 found sense of greatness which he felt throb- 
 bing at the heart of pain. Stung to new life 
 by the poignant hurt of grief in a soul woven 
 in grays out of other people's sorrows and 
 misfortunes, he quivered with a sudden in- 
 tuition of what it might mean to know and 
 share all the common lot. 
 
 His restlessness drew him forth from the 
 library to pace the graveled drive ; there 
 drooping leaf and grass blade, and the far 
 murmur of the waves, chimed with his sense
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 87 
 
 of life withdrawn. From the gateway his 
 eyes wandered over the wide sweep of coun- 
 try, and he saw the curling road that led 
 past the gray stone tower of his mother's 
 church, St. Mark's, and the grove of scraggly 
 locusts that marked the home of the Be- 
 vannes. The thought of the name startled 
 him, recalling the words of deep hatred that 
 his father had uttered in the solemn moment 
 of dying, and he searched his memory for 
 some incident in the long family quarrel 
 which could explain them. Grave misdeed 
 had there been in the remote past, and tra- 
 dition told of constant trouble between this 
 impetuous race of the Bevannes, with their 
 strain of French blood, and his own solid 
 English forbears. He was aware that the 
 latter, who were both reticent and proud, 
 had a way of treating offenses up to a cer- 
 tain point as not worth noticing, and beyond 
 that as past forgiveness, but he could remem- 
 ber nothing that could account for so great 
 intensity of present feeling. As he wondered,
 
 88 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 swift changes of expression flitted across his 
 face, shocked, deep pity for the father in 
 whom primitive passion, flaming up at that 
 great hour, had consumed all else ; deepened 
 love where he failed to understand ; and a 
 humorous compassion for himself as failing 
 to share the elemental feelings of the race, 
 were all written there. What should he do 
 with this heritage ? he asked himself whim- 
 sically, he who had no quarrel with any man, 
 who did not know the cause of his father's 
 deadly anger, and who, perhaps, did not care 
 strongly enough to hate. 
 
 He strolled back in the warm air to the 
 house and out into the garden paths, full 
 once more of the old weary feeling that he 
 had little use for the world and its puzzles. 
 
 "I have a fundamental prejudice against 
 all conundrums," he murmured to himself ; 
 then suddenly, and without warning, he 
 walked into a world entirely new. 
 
 There, by the tall white summer lilies, 
 whose fragrance made sweet the summer
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 89 
 
 air, stood a tall, white girl with a branch of 
 spiraea in her hand, her dark hair bare in the 
 sunlight, and her dark eyes full of dreams. 
 When she heard his step, she looked up but 
 did not move. Paul Hollis Warren swiftly 
 removed his hat and introduced himself : 
 when brought to bay, he was a young man 
 of complete self-possession and fine cour- 
 tesy. 
 
 " You are my mother's friend, Miss Wil- 
 mot," he said, holding out his hand. " May 
 I present myself as my mother's son ? " 
 
 The girl took his offered hand, but did not 
 speak. 
 
 " If it is not impertinent," said Paul, " I 
 should like to ask why you look so sur- 
 prised." 
 
 " Because," answered the stranger, half 
 seriously, " I had not the slightest idea that 
 you were real." 
 
 " I 'm not, altogether," confessed the host. 
 " None of us are, I presume. But what did 
 you think me ? "
 
 90 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " I thought that you were part of this en- 
 chanted garden, and of the past." 
 
 " Indeed ? " 
 
 " I thought that you belonged with Mr. 
 Peter's phantom ancestors, the wicked one, 
 and great-grandmother Anne. I thought 
 that the ghosts about this spot needed ajeime 
 premier) and that you had been invented 
 for the purpose and named Mr. Paul Hollis 
 Warren." 
 
 " But my mother " 
 
 " I thought that you were just a Delusion 
 of a Son that the dear lady had fashioned 
 out of dreams for her comfort. You will 
 admit that you have the property of being 
 invisible ? " 
 
 " I admit that I have it at times," an- 
 swered Paul, with a smile of unwonted gay- 
 ety. " Do you believe in nothing but what 
 you see ? " 
 
 " But I have been here so many times, 
 and you have not deigned to put on flesh 
 and blood."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 91 
 
 " I have been very busy," explained Paul 
 quietly. 
 
 The gravity in the girl's face broke, her 
 dimple quivered, and her eyes danced. 
 
 " If I may give you a suggestion, you do 
 not manage your exits and your entrances 
 as well as they did in the Arabian Nights. 
 There is just a minute at the transformation 
 when you are visible. Once it was at the end 
 of the garden walk that the change came ; 
 once it was in the library, and you left so 
 hastily that the door was still in motion. A 
 genuine ghost goes through the keyhole ! " 
 
 " I find the door a very comfortable means 
 of exit, thank you." 
 
 " It may all be comfortable for you," said 
 the girl severely, " but it is very uncomfort- 
 able for me. Mrs. Warren insists that she 
 finds comfort in my presence, and that she 
 likes to have me with her. But it is not 
 quite pleasant to think that I have driven 
 the master of the house to play the part of 
 castle spectre."
 
 92 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " I assure you that I have been absorbed 
 in other things. It would grieve me deeply, 
 Miss Wilmot, if you should take back one 
 minute of the time that you might give my 
 mother." 
 
 " Will you make a compact with me ? " 
 asked Frances Wilmot, noting the softened 
 look that came into the young man's face as 
 he spoke of his mother. " I should be very 
 sorry to deprive Mrs. Warren of anything 
 that may give her the slightest pleasure. If 
 you will stay in your accustomed places, so 
 that Mrs. Warren may still realize that she 
 has a son, I will promise to treat you as if 
 you were invisible. I will pretend that you 
 are n't there, and will never see you ! " 
 
 " I am not quite ready to agree to that," 
 said Paul, laughing outright, and looking at 
 her curiously. 
 
 " Then I shall stay away." 
 
 " Oh, I will promise, if you are serious," 
 he said hastily. 
 
 His mind was full of a bit of old story
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 93 
 
 which he had read on some serious page, 
 his knowledge of myth was strictly confined 
 to footnotes, of a maiden who had come 
 beckoning out of the world beyond the edge 
 of things with a spray of white blossoms in 
 her hand, and had witched a mortal man 
 away with her to live forever and a day in 
 fairyland. She must have looked like this 
 girl before him, and, when she stepped into 
 the world of every-day, must have wrought 
 some such change on grass and tree and 
 flower.
 
 94 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 VII 
 
 JL HE little gray stone church of St. Mark's 
 stood well within the hearing of the tide, 
 near a shingly beach where long, gentle 
 breakers were rolling monotonously in on 
 this June morning. Frances Wilmot, rever- 
 ent and rebellious, sad and again at peace, 
 as the words of the long service smote now 
 this chord and now that, closed her eyes 
 again and again, only for the pleasure of 
 opening them suddenly to steal a long glance 
 through the window near, where, beyond the 
 encircling green ivy leaves, she could look 
 out across the shining water of palest blue. 
 Word and phrase from old romance drifted 
 back to her, and it seemed as if she too, like 
 the wandering knight, had found a little 
 chapel by the side of the " leaved wood ; " 
 and as if across the waves might come the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 95 
 
 ship that moved without sail or oar, carry- 
 ing Perceval on his quest of the Holy Grail. 
 Sweet from the sea stole in the breeze to 
 creep about the altar, and the ivy leaves 
 trembled against it as it came. Murmur of 
 water and murmur of organ blended into one 
 soft music; then suddenly out of the low 
 melody sprang splendid power of sound, 
 bringing a swift sense of glory walking on 
 the water. 
 
 Her friends from the Inn were all there, 
 and, in the pauses of their own devotions, 
 they stole involuntary glances now and then 
 toward the girl who had become the centre 
 of their thoughts, to see how she was per- 
 forming hers. But the music won them all, 
 and swept them out from thoughts like these 
 to moods as great as the encircling horizon 
 line, and for a moment the sweep of the sea 
 and of the winds of God was in their souls. 
 
 With a sudden beat as of triumph the re- 
 cessional ceased, and the moment set to mel- 
 ody was over. The members of the congre-
 
 96 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 gation of St. Mark's realized that they were 
 out upon the green in front of the little 
 church, the music to which they had been 
 stepping still keeping rhythm in their feet. 
 Even Paul Warren, who cared more for the 
 harmony of high thoughts than for beaten 
 measures, was conscious that the air about 
 him was more exquisitely attuned than was 
 its wont, and no sooner was he aware of this 
 than there came a sudden breaking of its 
 perfectness. He was waiting while his mo- 
 ther stopped to speak to Miss Wilmot, when 
 a stranger came forward to meet him, a 
 stranger with a face that he knew. It was 
 a man of his own age, slender and supple, 
 with an ingratiating air in his bright blue 
 eyes and about his smiling mouth. There 
 was a touch of hesitancy in the newcomer's 
 manner as he held out his hand. 
 
 " It is a long time since we have met, 
 but you have not forgotten Alec Bevanne, 
 I hope?" 
 
 "Of course not," said Paul Warren, re-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 97 
 
 turning the handshake, " though it must be 
 a matter of fifteen years or so since I've 
 seen you." 
 
 "Odd that we should have missed each 
 other constantly. You 've been back at the 
 old place now and then ? " 
 
 " Often, in summer. You were abroad 
 when I heard of you last." 
 
 The young man nodded, smiling. 
 
 " Digging, yes. I 've done a lot of it, 
 Paris mostly. Now it 's my turn to set other 
 youngsters at it." 
 
 As Paul Warren looked at his old play- 
 mate, thinking how oddly the new half-seri- 
 ous look sat upon the face which was asso- 
 ciated in his mind with prisoner's base and 
 marbles, and wondering how that headlong 
 nature, given to quick deed and quick re- 
 penting, in flashes of emotion or of momen- 
 tary conviction, could adapt itself to the 
 routine of academic life, there came sud- 
 denly into his mind an echo of the words his 
 father had uttered as he lay dying : " Fight,
 
 98 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 fight Bevanne . . . look out for the young 
 one then . . . young rattlesnakes are as 
 poisonous as old ones." The memory of John 
 Warren's expression as he had spoken these 
 words fell like a shadow on the peaceful pic- 
 ture of sunlight shining on women's faces 
 and on children's curls, and a sense of more 
 vivid curiosity than he had ever before felt 
 concerning the long mystery that had clung 
 to the relationship of his family with the 
 Bevannes swept over Paul Warren : what 
 had caused that look of frozen anger on his 
 father's face when chance placed any mem- 
 ber of that family in his way ? What had 
 he to do with vendetta directed against this 
 smiling, harmless enemy, whose eager friend- 
 liness seemed to have back of it the same 
 puzzled feeling that he had himself? The 
 moment wrapped him round in a sort of hu- 
 morous sadness*; after all, you were bidden 
 to love your enemy, as well as to obey your 
 parents, and perhaps the former command 
 was the more cogent of the two.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 99 
 
 His state of mind was certainly pacific, 
 when, following the glance of Alec Be- 
 vanne's eyes, a flash of illumination came, 
 and he fancied that he understood the sud- 
 den cordiality. It was not for the sake of 
 the old days when the two had been play- 
 mates that the young man had stopped to 
 speak with him, it was because of this 
 Southern girl who was talking with his 
 mother, and whose soft black gown and 
 drooping black hat were worn with such un- 
 wonted grace. Paul Warren involuntarily 
 turned away, refusing the unspoken request, 
 then paused in amusement at his own action 
 and the touch of irritation that had led to 
 it. Understanding his neighbor perfectly at 
 that moment, he was aware that he failed 
 to understand himself and his assumption of 
 protective rights. 
 
 " Won't you stop to see my sister Alice ? " 
 asked Bevanne, whose quick eyes had divined 
 the other's action, but still beamed friendli- 
 ness ; there was never in them reproach for
 
 any one. " You remember her ? She used to 
 cry because she could not play baseball with 
 
 us." 
 
 Paul lifted his eyes and saw her. She had 
 grown from a slender child into a slender 
 woman : her pale yellow hair had not dark- 
 ened by a shade, but her eyes, which were of 
 light hazel with extraordinarily large pupils, 
 had gained a world of meaning and of ex- 
 pression. As he greeted her they were fixed 
 upon him with a gaze so intense that they 
 made him uneasy. She had heard her bro- 
 ther's remark, but she did not speak nor 
 smile, and it was left to Paul to face the oc- 
 casion. Meeting one who mastered him in 
 silence was something of a shock, and the po- 
 lite remark he had intended to make slipped 
 away. 
 
 " But you used to be the swiftest at tag," 
 he said, going back at one bound over many 
 years. 
 
 Now a slow smile came like color into the 
 girl's face, touching eyes and cheeks with
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 101 
 
 added expression, where almost too much 
 had been before. 
 
 "That never atoned for the baseball," 
 said Alice Bevanne. 
 
 Mrs. Warren turned suddenly, and her 
 pleasure at seeing her son talking with the 
 children of the family enemy left a flush upon 
 her face. It was she who, after a cordial 
 greeting, presented them to the girl at her 
 side, and she stood beaming over them all 
 with an expression which was the peace of 
 the moment made visible. 
 
 " It is very jolly to meet some one from 
 the South, Miss Wilmot," Alec Bevanne 
 was saying. " I am a Southerner myself 
 now." 
 
 "Indeed?" 
 
 " Do you know Alabama University ? " he 
 asked, stroking his smooth-shaven chin with 
 a gesture which recalled the vanished pointed 
 beard. " I am there for the present." 
 
 It occurred to Paul Warren as he heard 
 this remark that he was in the presence of
 
 102 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 a man with whom he should be glad to differ 
 in matters of opinion and of taste, and he 
 smiled with satisfaction as Miss Wilmot care- 
 lessly changed the subject, tacitly refusing 
 to discuss the young professor's career. 
 
 One by one the people about them de- 
 parted, white gown and yellow and blue 
 drifting past against the background of cool 
 green leaf and grass ; Paul led his mother 
 to her carriage, while the Southern girl 
 waited for her companions from the Inn. 
 Together they walked home through the 
 fragrant, dust-flecked air, the petals of pink 
 wild roses falling along their path, and, over- 
 head, the leaves of silver poplars trembling 
 in gray-green against the sky. 
 
 The ladies of the Emerson Inn had adopted 
 this girl with no mental reserves ; the War- 
 ren carriage had waited for her too often at 
 the door to leave any doubt of her desira- 
 bility as an acquaintance. With not only 
 Respectability but Tradition bending thus 
 obsequiously over her, they whispered to
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 103 
 
 one another that her strange arrival was 
 mere accident : she had come North to visit 
 Mrs. Warren, but had been prevented by 
 Mr. Warren's sudden illness and death. 
 Moreover, they liked her : it was as if some 
 tropical bird of brilliant plumage and vivid 
 eyes had dropped down among them. There 
 was always about her an air of expectancy, 
 for she was one to whom the kaleidoscopic 
 shifting of things constantly presented new 
 shades of beauty and of significance, and 
 she ever kept an alert eye on the flashing, 
 changing stuff of life. Something of her 
 sense of wonder and romance walking still 
 the paths of every day began to hover like 
 a rosy cloud about each gray head. 
 
 It was not only the guests who were 
 touched by it : every inhabitant of the Inn, 
 from Mr. Phipps to the schoolmistress-maid, 
 felt a touch of indefinable pleasure in the 
 presence of this girl. Yet the schoolmistress 
 sorely disapproved, and was not without a 
 secret share of the hope cherished by the
 
 104 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 cultured ladies, of leading this Southern 
 maiden to a higher life. 
 
 " I 'm fond of reading, too," ventured the 
 maid, glancing one day at the pile of books 
 that had to take refuge on the floor in a 
 corner of Miss Wilmot's room, " but I never 
 read novels. I don't believe in wasting time, 
 do you ? " 
 
 She got only a smile for reply, a puzzled, 
 serious smile that finally decided to be merry 
 and broke into little quivering curves at the 
 corners of the lips ; and she went away, 
 baffled, with a puzzled face. It was as if she 
 had lost sight of something that had just 
 passed, many -colored and with iridescent 
 wings. 
 
 With a purpose as lofty as that of the 
 maid, the guests of the Inn bore Frances 
 Wilmot away in triumph this Sunday after- 
 noon, a maiden sacrifice, to read poetry upon 
 the rocks. They were all in a softened mood, 
 and, before beginning, indulged her in a lit- 
 tle random conversation.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 105 
 
 " How does it happen that you have never 
 before seen the ocean, my dear ? " asked the 
 Lady from Wilmington. 
 
 " We had a summer home at Blue Ridge 
 and went there nearly every year," answered 
 the girl, her heart crying out for the call of the 
 gulls and the sweep of the sea and silence. 
 
 It was the little Lady from Boston who 
 sat nearest her on the rocks, claiming a place 
 as friend by virtue of her initial judgment 
 of the young stranger. " One can always 
 tell a lady, I think," was all she had said by 
 way of reproof ; and she had followed her 
 first favors with kindliness that was both 
 simple and sweet. 
 
 " Is n't it charming at the Warren place ? " 
 she asked. " Do you know that it is full, 
 simply full, of treasures ? There are silver 
 platters and punch bowls and beautiful old 
 spoons hidden away in the dark cupboards. 
 Do ask Mrs. Warren to bring them out for 
 you some day." 
 
 " Why ? " asked the girl perversely.
 
 106 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Because you may never have another 
 chance." 
 
 " But I 've seen that kind of thing all my 
 life. I 'm sorry, but I cannot care profoundly 
 about old punch bowls." 
 
 " Mr. Paul Warren looks more distant than 
 ever," growled the Lady from Cincinnati. 
 "No man of his age ought to have that 
 brooding expression, and yet his face is dis- 
 tinctly interesting. He resembles some old 
 portrait that one often sees : whose is it, 
 Sir Thomas More's, or " 
 
 " It is the Warren house that he resem- 
 bles," volunteered Frances Wilmot in the 
 pause. " He has that look suggesting old 
 experiences not his own." 
 
 "He is very gifted and very eccentric," 
 interposed the Lady from Boston hastily, 
 lest something still more foolish should be 
 said. " Nobody knows him. So much of his 
 time has been spent abroad, and so much 
 now is spent in study, that I imagine he is 
 out of touch with things."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 107 
 
 " Educated as a lawyer, was n't he ? " 
 asked the elderly lady who was Somebody 
 from Somewhere. 
 
 "I do not know," said Frances Wilmot 
 patiently. She felt the need of many things 
 more keenly than the need of conversation 
 about Mr. Paul Warren. 
 
 " Humph ! " said the lady who had asked 
 the question. " It seems to me I have heard 
 his Uncle Peter tell how he finished his study 
 and began practicing in Boston. One day 
 he drove up to the old house here in a sta- 
 tion carriage, with his trunks in an express 
 wagon behind him. 
 
 " < Well ? ' said old Mr. Warren ; they are 
 such a silent family, you know. 
 
 " 'I 've given it up,' said Mr. Paul. 'I shall 
 try some profession where I can be an honest 
 man.' 
 
 " The father only chuckled, without a 
 word, and Mr. Peter said that it was probably 
 the longest discussion of motive that had 
 ever taken place between them."
 
 108 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 Here the reading began. They had brought 
 with them the most detestable of anthologies, 
 and to the girl in whose behalf they were 
 exerting themselves all anthologies were de- 
 testable, and they took turns in rendering 
 the verse contained therein. Frances Wilmot 
 profanely recalled scenes of Indian torture 
 where a similar rotation was observed, for 
 false metres truly rendered and true metres 
 falsely rendered smote like blows upon her 
 sensitive ear. They were too tactful to ask 
 her to take her turn : the schools in the South 
 were so poor, and she probably did not read 
 very well ! Neither at the reading nor during 
 the discussion that followed, however, did her 
 inner misery break through her fine courtesy. 
 They were very good to her, she kept say- 
 ing to herself, as she clung to the rock with 
 appealing hands. 
 
 " They take life as they take grape-nuts," 
 she thought, " predigested, and with the sub- 
 stance gone. What meaning can it have for 
 them after it has been so discussed ? Can't
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 109 
 
 they see that beauty talked about disap- 
 pears? " 
 
 To-day the criticism languished, for, all 
 unknown to the ladies of the Emerson Inn, 
 the intellectuality of their lives was slipping 
 away in the presence of this girl's keen zest 
 in facing existence. When at last they let 
 her go, they watched her, dreaming, for the 
 charm of her free footsteps had begun to 
 touch the measure of their own, and wher- 
 ever she was there was a sense as of doors 
 and windows flung open to wide spaces. 
 
 Upon a straggling woodland path, soft with 
 pine needles of unnumbered years, she set 
 her feet with a sense of exquisite relief. Deli- 
 cate leaves of birch and of poplar touched her 
 flushed cheek with green coolness ; she gath- 
 ered her hands full of live spruce twigs and 
 crushed them passionately. It was hard for 
 one whose gift was that of winning from 
 each moment its utmost reach of joy or of 
 pain to understand this sort of mental nib- 
 bling at the edges of things, yet she knew
 
 110 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 that the air was sweeter and her path more 
 free because of her late bondage, and, with 
 a sigh, she let the great silence of beauty 
 infold her.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 111 
 
 VIII 
 
 \_/N a broad shelf of rock in a great fissure 
 of the cliff sat Frances Wilmot, her hands 
 clasped about her knees, swaying rhythmi- 
 cally to and fro with the rhythm of the waves 
 beneath. Spray dashed on her brown cheek 
 and bare head, and a little wind had blown 
 one damp lock across her face. A line of 
 deep tan showed on either arm outstretched 
 from the white shirt-waist; there were no 
 floating ruffles about her now, only a sturdy 
 white pique* that showed traces of recent 
 climbing over the rocks. She bore small 
 resemblance to the dainty maiden who had 
 alighted at the Emerson Inn three weeks 
 ago, and might have been a sea-born thing 
 that had crawled for a little space out of the 
 limpid water and the tangled weeds of green 
 and brown that grew below. She was croon-
 
 112 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 ing softly to herself as she swayed this way 
 and that, for out of her passionate love she 
 was making a song of the tide, and the rich 
 voice sank to low murmurs, then rose to 
 clear triumph as the little ripple over the 
 rocks got into it, and the joy of the oncom- 
 ing wave. She listened, as she tried now 
 this note and now that, for the melody of 
 retreating water, and its hidden sound as it 
 sought crevice or tiny cavern that none else 
 knew, while the memory of its least echo on 
 the pebbles of the long beach came back to 
 her, and of its thunder in the sudden storm 
 of two days ago. 
 
 " Oh, I can't do you ! " she said, shaking 
 back her spray-moistened hair ; " you are so 
 free a thing, and yet the great rhythm is 
 there in the veriest ripple that I can hardly 
 hear." 
 
 Living the life of the water, she had grown 
 to talk to the sea as to a comrade, and on 
 far headland or at the edge of sheer gray 
 cliff a mighty presence had seemed to meet
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE US 
 
 her, answering word and cry. Now she was 
 silent ; in the silence, too, the answer came, 
 and the girl listened, with eyelids closed, her 
 dark head leaning against the rock. Paul 
 Warren, coming abruptly upon her retreat, 
 stopped, afraid to move this way or that, lest 
 her eyes should open ; and, as he paused, 
 irresolute, he gazed with deepening wonder. 
 That expression, worn by her face and by 
 the whole figure nestling close to the stone, 
 of being one with sun and sea and rock, 
 smote home to the heart of the man who had 
 known close kinship with naught save books. 
 More quick than ever in his heart to-day were 
 those old influences, of morbid theory and of 
 melancholy life, which had worked on the 
 mind of the child with an intensity cruelly 
 disproportionate to their real weight; and 
 wind and sea, bringing a keener sense of 
 aloofness, brought, too, unknown desire. 
 Curiously impersonal at last in his way of 
 taking things, he had grown to stand apart 
 even from himself, in an attitude not of
 
 114 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 self -absorption, but of self-indifference ; one's 
 own personality was an object of such small 
 interest ! Now his whole being was full of a 
 sudden yearning to find and claim his world, 
 for the touch of life had come like the flick 
 of a whip on the sensitive flanks of a rest- 
 ive horse. The wide horizon line and the 
 look on Frances Wilmot's face brought home 
 to him a deepened feeling of his isolation, 
 and no sooner was he aware of it than she 
 opened her eyes, causing an expression of 
 genuine annoyance in his. Was it because 
 he was disturbing her or because she was 
 disturbing him, she wondered, as she gave 
 him greeting. 
 
 " You really ought not to appear unan- 
 nounced," she said saucily, unawed by the 
 half-frown on his face. " Polite ghosts rap. 
 Don't you realize that the sudden materiali- 
 zation of spirits is trying for mortal nerves ? " 
 
 He smiled back, quickly touched by her 
 mood. 
 
 " May the ghost sit down for a minute,
 
 long enough to beg your pardon, that is, 
 if it is permitted to him to speak ? " 
 
 " They never wait for permission. It is 
 their own caprice, and not that of the living, 
 that governs them." 
 
 " In that case," said Paul Warren, settling 
 himself comfortably, " I feel justified in stay- 
 ing, even at the risk of disturbing the mer- 
 maid in her cave." 
 
 " I 'm not a mermaid," said the girl, her 
 lip curling imperceptibly. 
 
 " And I 'm not a ghost. But if you set the 
 fashion of calling names, you must expect 
 people to follow." 
 
 " There 's a difference between calling 
 names and giving names," she retorted, look- 
 ing at him through merry, half-shut eyes. 
 " And you really are a ghost, you know, only 
 you don't half understand your properties. 
 You ought to appear in diaphanous white, 
 made in the fashion of a trailing robe or toga, 
 and you ought to wear a dim electric light 
 shining somewhere in your hair. I will ad-
 
 116 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 mit, however, that you have chosen a day 
 quite in keeping with the spirit world." 
 
 It was one of the times of veiled beauty, 
 when pine and juniper and sweet-fern on the 
 cliff above wore a deeper and more blended 
 green because of the absent sunlight, and 
 the gray-brown rocks with their crumbling 
 lichens took on a lovelier tone. The low, 
 soft clouds that floated overhead shaded from 
 purple to pale silvery gray which matched the 
 under side of the wings of the gulls, and the 
 water gave back the color hue for hue, out 
 and farther out where even the horizon line 
 vanished in the mystery of infinite distance. 
 It was late afternoon ; cliff swallows, with 
 deep purple wings and breasts that hinted 
 the dim red of the rocks, were circling near ; 
 and the air was soft and sweet as the caresses 
 of dear, dead hands. 
 
 " Ghost," said Frances Wilmot, turning 
 suddenly to check the mist that came un- 
 bidden to her eyes, "I see a book in your 
 pocket. There is a spiritualist lady at the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 117 
 
 Inn who would be delighted to find out what 
 you read in the place you come from. Per- 
 haps she could make little paragraphs for the 
 papers : ' Books most in demand during the 
 last week in the Spirit World ! ' " 
 
 Paul Warren drew the volume from its 
 hiding-place. 
 
 " I was merely investigating ; it does not 
 represent my taste." 
 
 " Nietsche ! " cried the girl. " Now I know 
 why you have avoided me so carefully : you 
 were afraid I would talk to you about Niet- 
 sche. I assure you I won't ; I have n't read 
 him." 
 
 " You must be a rather unusual woman if 
 that would prevent you from discussing him ! 
 Besides, I have n't avoided you." 
 
 " Mr. Paul Hollis Warren," said the girl 
 quickly, " is n't your great-great-great-grand- 
 father Warren about to enter into you and 
 tell a fib ? " 
 
 It was impossible not to give back her 
 laughter, note for note.
 
 118 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Perhaps," he admitted, " but I had not 
 met you." 
 
 " That 's something of a bull, is n't it, 
 you could not meet me because you had not 
 met me ? But to come back to Learned Wo- 
 men : what do you suppose my comrades at 
 the Inn asked me last night ? " 
 
 " Being a mere man, I have not the wit 
 to suggest." 
 
 " What arguments for the immortality of 
 the soul I thought most convincing ! " 
 
 " And you told them " 
 
 " I told them," she said, with a dimple, 
 " to remember that the schools in the South 
 are very poor; it is something they often 
 say to excuse my shortcomings. Then the 
 Lady from Wilmington said that it was a 
 most important question, to which I should 
 give deep thought." 
 
 "How did you escape?" 
 
 "I said," she answered slowly, "that, 
 whatever it is, it isn't a question, and that 
 any immortality of the soul worth having is
 
 beyond the reach of argument, for to say 
 that you believe is to express a doubt. 
 Surely it is present, insistent, throbbing in 
 every nerve! The Lady from Wilmington 
 was deeply shocked." 
 
 " Did anything happen ? " 
 
 The girl answered by a peal of laughter. 
 
 " In the words of old romance : ' She 
 shaped herself, horse and man, by enchant- 
 ment into a great marble stone.' Then she 
 was attacked by the Lady from Cincinnati, 
 who is scientific, and a positivist. She re- 
 marked, between two bits of a roll, that our 
 knowledge is strictly limited to the world 
 that we see ; that metaphysical assertions 
 are therefore impossible, and then said loudly 
 that there is no immortality of the soul. I 
 am telling you all this because I don't know 
 whether it is the Summer Girl or the Learned 
 Woman that you are afraid of in me, and 
 I am trying to find a golden mean between 
 the two, being neither." 
 
 " I suppose it would be useless to assure
 
 120 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 you that I am not afraid of you in any as- 
 pect ; I trust that I have the courage of an 
 ordinary man. I am very much interested 
 in what you are saying ; please go on." 
 
 " There, was n't any more," said Frances, 
 " for I insisted that her last remark was a 
 metaphysical assertion, and that she ought 
 not to make it, therefore she said that my 
 logic would improve as I grew older." 
 
 Paul Warren looked at the girl curiously : 
 it was hard to tell whether she was merry or 
 sad, in jest or in earnest. The serious glance 
 of his eyes brought mirth quickly to the sur- 
 face in hers. 
 
 " Ghost," she said suddenly, " do you 
 know that the water is all purple-gray, chan- 
 ging every minute with a beauty that takes 
 the heart out of you ? " 
 
 He looked at it critically. 
 
 " No," he admitted ; I did not." 
 
 "And the heart of it all is the change, 
 change, change ; can't you hear the mo- 
 ments go by with swiftly tripping feet ? It
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 121 
 
 is the feeling it come and go that makes the 
 beauty ; you will never find through all 
 eternity just the same shade of color, what- 
 ever more exquisite tint may come." 
 
 " You are a poet," he said deliberately. 
 " Why are n't you writing poetry ? " 
 
 She spread her brown hands out to the 
 spray. 
 
 " Why spoil it by writing it ? I want to 
 feel it in my finger tips, and hear it in my 
 ears, with no printed pages between. Do you 
 know that the waves make an entirely dif- 
 ferent music on the rocks and in all the clefts 
 and crannies on a shaded day like this, from 
 that which they make when the sun is shin- 
 ing?" 
 
 " I am afraid not," he answered, smiling 
 skeptically. 
 
 She looked at him with laughing eyes. 
 
 " You are just a mind, very thinly em- 
 bodied, are n't you ? You would n't care if 
 the sky were colorless and the sea dumb. 
 You oughtn't to be troubled with carrying
 
 122 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 about the weight of a body, for you don't 
 need even wings." 
 
 " I thought you were only a girl," he re- 
 marked irrelevantly. 
 
 " I 'm not ! " said Frances. " ' I 'm a wo- 
 man growed,' if you please, sir! But do you 
 mind telling me what it is like in the realm 
 of pure thought ? " 
 
 " Not if you will tell me what it is like 
 under the sea," he retorted. 
 
 " Oh," cried the girl, " I could n't tell you 
 all, for part of it is a mystery. But it is cool 
 and clear and green, and the bed of it is dim 
 with gold and red with coral, and rich colors 
 running all through the scale are there, 
 browns that shade into purples, and blues 
 that fade into greens, and some of the 
 growths are live creatures, and some don't 
 know whether they are living things or 
 not," - here she glanced wickedly at him 
 and tilted her chin a wee bit in the air, 
 " and " 
 
 " And ? " for she had paused.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 123 
 
 " You sit in the midst of it, and you bathe 
 in the color that is like living light. You sit 
 way, way down at the centre of the deep, 
 and you know the heart of the great tides, 
 and the way they come and the way they go, 
 and the reason of it all, but you never tell." 
 
 " Don't stop," he begged. 
 
 " You shall have no more of it," she an- 
 swered, " until you can see the color and 
 hear the waves. Now tell me how they made 
 you a ghost ; I want to know the training in 
 the Spirit Land." 
 
 " It goes way, way back," he said lightly. 
 " First you have some ancestors who think 
 much about theology " 
 
 " And one who is bad," suggested Frances. 
 
 " One who is very bad, and many who are 
 reckless, and in the course of time the race 
 gets rather confused in its mind, the sinners 
 beginning to brood too much over their 
 sins" 
 
 " And about saving their own souls," in- 
 terrupted the girl.
 
 124 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Precisely. They read a great deal and 
 they meditate a great deal, and then, pos- 
 sibly because they have found life too much 
 for them, they hand it on, till at last it 
 comes to a youngster made out of all the 
 odds and ends, of broken faiths and shattered 
 ideals. He has a fairly active mind, and, 
 brought up in the shadow of the past, he sets 
 to work to try to think things out. You see, 
 as he grows up, he feels that the powers that 
 be have tossed him a pretty hard nut to 
 crack when they tossed him this world " 
 
 " And a boy who would never have 
 dreamed of trying to crack a nut by think- 
 ing about it, but would have gone at it with 
 nerve and muscle, is foolish enough to be- 
 lieve that he can think out this world ! " cried 
 the girl willfully. " And yet it was n't his 
 fault. They had taught him theories and 
 theologies, and so he turned out to be " 
 
 " A ghost ? " said Paul Warren, laughing. 
 It was the first foolish conversation he had 
 ever had in his life, and he was enjoying it
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 125 
 
 "A philosopher," said the girl severely. 
 
 " You don't object to a man's using what 
 mind he has ? " he queried meekly. 
 
 " It should be kept in its place, being a 
 good servant, but a bad master." 
 
 " Who taught you all this ? Siren or mer- 
 maid you must be, for no mortal maiden of 
 your years could have this depth of know- 
 ledge. It is a combination of the wisdom of 
 four years and of fourscore." 
 
 " A father and a mother," said the girl, 
 with a sudden shining in her eyes, "who 
 had lived and who knew. The wisdom and 
 the beauty of things I felt when I was a 
 little child at their knees, and it was impos- 
 sible, as I grew older, not to understand." 
 
 The purple-winged swallows flew nearer, 
 unafraid, for the voices had ceased, and the 
 two people in the cleft in the rock were sud- 
 denly aware that their jesting conversation 
 had led them into the depths ; and, with the 
 feeling once more that they were strangers, 
 there was on the part of both a desire to es-
 
 126 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 cape. Water and gentle air and cloud floated 
 softly about them, encompassing them with 
 rest. Paul Warren took his leave, stiffly 
 enough. He was half angry with himself for 
 the way in which he had been talking with 
 a woman, having never before ventured so 
 far from under the protecting shell of his 
 reserve ; and he was filled with wonder at 
 this girl's poignant sense of things of which 
 in his nine and twenty years he had been 
 but dimly aware. Her eager grasp on all 
 that touched her life stung him with sudden 
 conviction of the futility of his careless way 
 of letting go.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 127 
 
 IX 
 
 JL AUL," asked Uncle Peter sharply, strolling 
 down the piazza steps with a cigar between his 
 teeth, " what is the lawn being clipped for ? " 
 
 Lifting his eyes from his book, the young 
 man looked with a certain satisfaction down 
 the broad slope which was being converted 
 into something halfway between a stubble 
 field and velvet turf. 
 
 " I thought it would be a good thing to 
 get it into the shape it had when grand- 
 father was alive. We have been a bit care- 
 less lately." 
 
 Uncle Peter clapped his hands together in 
 delight. He was in high spirits this morn- 
 ing, and evidently in possession, according 
 to his own theories, of the jolliest soul 
 among his forefathers. 
 
 " I told you so ! I told you so ! Ancestral
 
 128 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 traits coming out as plain as daylight ! You 
 laugh at my ideas, yet here you are a living 
 proof of them. So your grandfather Warren 
 is uppermost in you to-day ! / am having a 
 touch myself of Peter Finch ; he was a great 
 joker, you know. Wonderful, wonderful that 
 you can't escape from your grandfather, 
 however hard you try." 
 
 Here Uncle Peter turned and saw old An- 
 drew Lane standing near with a rake in his 
 hand, and listening with an amused grin on 
 his wrinkled old face. He nodded, but did 
 not touch his battered straw hat, and a flush 
 crept over Uncle Peter's cheeks ; this man 
 was always rude to him. 
 
 " Take off your hat to your betters, An- 
 drew," he said, not without condescension. 
 The grin spread farther, and, w r ith open 
 mouth, the old man laughed silently. 
 
 " So I do," he answered, advancing to- 
 ward Paul and touching his hat brim. " The 's 
 a man here from Porchmouth says you 
 wanted him."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 129 
 
 " Bring him here," said the young pro- 
 prietor. " It is a gardener who I thought 
 could give us some suggestions about touch- 
 ing up the old place." 
 
 Uncle Peter stood near and listened to 
 the dialogue that followed, a cloud gather- 
 ing on his brow. 
 
 " I do not want things much changed," 
 explained Paul to the Portsmouth man. " I 
 wish to keep it in all essentials as it was 
 in my father's day, but it could be made a 
 little trimmer." 
 
 " Yes, sir, yes," assented the man, han- 
 dling his pruning shears. 
 
 " It ought to look more as if it were in- 
 habited by the living as well as by the dead," 
 thought Paul. 
 
 When the gardener had gone, Uncle Peter 
 took up again the thread of conversation 
 which he had reluctantly dropped. 
 
 " Oh, you want to go on reading, do you ? 
 It's always books," he muttered. "Who- 
 ever you get that taste from, it is n't from
 
 ISO THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 me ; must be somebody on your mother's 
 side ; though, to be sure, your father had 
 it I, for my part, don't believe that great 
 readers think as much as people who use 
 their wits in observation. To a man who is 
 capable of carrying on a sustained train of 
 thought, everything in the natural world 
 contributes something to his idea. Now to 
 me the very birds on the trees, and Belinda 
 when she scrubs, and the butterflies and 
 the grasshoppers teach something of hered- 
 ity." 
 
 Here he trotted away, but presently was 
 back again, his early mood of cheerfulness 
 changed to deep gloom, and he inquired sus- 
 piciously how much was to be paid a day to 
 this new gardener, and how much to the 
 mason whom he had found mending the wall. 
 
 " It 's absurd, Paul," he burst out sud- 
 denly, "that the management of my pro- 
 perty should have gone to you. Why, I can 
 remember when you wore dresses and had a 
 curl on the top of your head."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 131 
 
 "It was father's wish," answered Paul 
 briefly. 
 
 " He was foolish, as foolish as his father 
 and mine before him," answered Uncle Peter, 
 irritably tapping the piazza step with his 
 cane. " Why was the bulk of the property 
 left to John, anyway, when I was the oldest 
 son, and only an allowance to me ? Why 
 was your father to manage even that ? " and 
 the old man glared at his nephew. 
 
 " Don't you remember that grandfather 
 had English ideas, and wanted the estate 
 to be inherited by one son ? I presume he 
 thought you did not want to be bothered 
 with it at all," answered Paul gently. He 
 was sorry for the old man, and the fre- 
 quent efforts that had to be made to explain 
 to him that which never could be explained 
 were hard for both of them. 
 
 " Bothered ! " shrieked Uncle Peter. 
 " Bothered with a little money of my own ! " 
 and he sank down into a chair, rocking furi- 
 ously to and fro.
 
 It was with a cunning expression that 
 he inquired carelessly after a minute's si- 
 lence : 
 
 " Where do you get the money for all 
 these improvements, my boy ? " 
 
 "It doesn't take much," was the answer; 
 " there is really very little being done. 
 There happens to be quite a surplus in the 
 bank just now." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Uncle Peter in a tone that 
 spoke volumes. 
 
 " You need n't be alarmed," said Paul 
 good-naturedly. " I am not using yours. 
 You get your allowance regularly, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "I do, as yet," answered the old man 
 ironically. " I wonder if you know that there 
 is a trace of swindling in the blood? Now 
 your great - great - great - grandfather War- 
 ren" 
 
 " Oh, confusion seize my great - great- 
 great-grandfather Warren ! " cried Paul, too 
 amused to be irritated, and too irritated to
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 133 
 
 be entirely amused. " If there has ever been 
 anything but over-scrupulous honesty in the 
 family, nobody but you knows anything 
 about it. Go to your banker and make in- 
 quiries, if you think that I am wronging 
 you." 
 
 "I meant nothing, nothing at all," said 
 Uncle Peter, disappearing in the direction of 
 the dining-room and the sideboard. " I only 
 think it is well to be constantly on the alert 
 against temptation. Yes, yes, my allowance 
 came as usual this morning." 
 
 He soon came back to his nephew, evi- 
 dently in better humor. 
 
 " I tell you what it is," he said gravely, 
 " when I went in there just now it was as 
 if a hand, my great-great-grandfather War- 
 ren's hand, were pushing me toward the side- 
 board." 
 
 " Perhaps I 'd better keep it locked," sug- 
 gested Paul. " What do you say, uncle ? " 
 
 "No, no, no," answered the old man 
 quickly. " I might come some time and find
 
 134 
 
 it shut, and who can tell what spirit would 
 enter in to rend and tear ? You cannot 
 trifle, Paul, you cannot trifle with the dead ; " 
 and with this solemn warning the conversa- 
 tion was over. 
 
 It touched Paul to see his mother's plea- 
 sure in the beauty that was coming back to 
 the old home. That slope of the lawn with 
 its great elms looked like Washington, she 
 said one day, now that it was so smooth ; 
 only, the far street beyond was but a country 
 road and lacked the gay life of the city. Paul 
 said little, but listened with a certain re- 
 morse : why had they not done this before, 
 his father and he, who had jogged on so 
 comfortably with their own thoughts, for- 
 getful of a woman's needs ? With a gratified 
 sense 'that he was busy with his father's task, 
 the young man went about his work, judg- 
 ing, and rightly, that John Warren would 
 have been glad to see these changes that he 
 had neglected to make. Paul sent to Wash- 
 ington to inquire what was the best time of
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 135 
 
 the year to transplant magnolia trees, order- 
 ing some to be sent when the proper season 
 came. Did his mother know, he asked, the 
 place by Morningkill Brook where dogwood 
 blossomed in the spring? He coaxed her 
 to walk with him there, that she might find 
 the spot and be ready when the flowers came 
 again with their suggestion of the South. A 
 faint little ripple of belated happiness came 
 into Mrs. Warren's heart in those days, as 
 her son began slowly to understand. 
 
 For Mrs. Warren's new mood the Vir- 
 ginia girl was partly responsible ; she was 
 much with the elder lady, coming often for 
 a luncheon or a drive. Her scrupulous ad- 
 herence to the compact she had made with 
 Paul Warren amused him as much as it 
 mystified his mother. Unless directly ad- 
 dressed, she did not speak to him, and, when 
 listening, wore the air of one hearkening to 
 a voice that came from far away. 
 
 "Did some one speak?" she asked, with 
 wickedly twinkling eyes, on one occasion
 
 136 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 when Paul had made what seemed to his 
 mother a particularly impressive remark. 
 How could it be that they disliked each other 
 so. much, even to the verge of rudeness, 
 Mrs. Warren asked herself, when Paul was 
 Paul and this girl was so charming ? 
 
 " Tell me something about Miss Bevanne," 
 said Frances Wilmot one day at luncheon, 
 when a sudden feeling that her silence was 
 not fair to the people who did not under- 
 stand the cause made her speak to her host. 
 
 " I know nothing of her," he answered, 
 " except that she used to be a little girl " 
 
 " Strange," murmured the guest. 
 
 " With two long braids of pale hair, and 
 no color in her face except in her eyes." 
 
 "Not color," corrected Frances Wilmot. 
 " Her eyes have no color ; it is only light. 
 She looks as if she had some inner source 
 of illumination." 
 
 Then she leaned back in her chair, gazing 
 at Paul as if she did not see him, but as 
 if she were looking through a mist at the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 137 
 
 paneled door behind. This expression of in- 
 terested amusement that he was wearing 
 always irritated her. 
 
 An eager flush came into Mrs. Warren's 
 face as she spoke. 
 
 " I hope you may meet Miss Bevanne 
 some time here. The other day at church I 
 invited her to come with her brother. They 
 never were here as children, because of some 
 old trouble, which I should like to have for- 
 gotten." 
 
 As chance would have it, they came that 
 afternoon, when Mrs. Warren, worn out by 
 a headache, was asleep, and Frances Wilmot, 
 now thoroughly at home in the old house, 
 was reading in a hammock on the piazza. 
 Paul had gone to meet an engagement in 
 the city, and it was left to Uncle Peter to 
 do the honors for the family. He performed 
 his task with a stateliness and a garrulity 
 most amusing to the guests, whom he- enter- 
 tained by displaying the old pre-revolution- 
 ary Warren house, still standing behind a
 
 138 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 clump of spruces not far away. Finding in- 
 terested listeners, he began to harp upon his 
 pet theories, and to Miss Wilmot in particu- 
 lar, whom he had never had so much at his 
 disposal as to-day, he poured out his inter- 
 pretations of the family history, while Mr. 
 Bevanne and his sister were still lingering 
 in the old kitchen. That was an intelligent 
 and charming girl, Uncle Peter thought to 
 himself, as she sat listening to him on the 
 old settle by the huge brick fireplace in the 
 parlor, vainly wishing that fate had let her 
 talk with Alice Bevanne. He told her of his 
 great-grandmother Anne, with her love of 
 beautiful things, and of great-great-grand- 
 father Warren, whose sins lived on in the 
 family like suppressed volcanic fire. 
 
 " It all goes on quietly in the main, Miss 
 Wilmot," he said earnestly. "It's a good 
 family, and all that, but there is something 
 hot down under, and you can never tell when 
 it is going to flame out. Grass green over 
 the lava, you know, and then one day, hiss,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 139 
 
 comes the eruption ! Now these tendencies 
 burst out when you least expect them : cer- 
 tain of them I confess to having myself, and 
 certain others I clearly discern in Paul." 
 
 The girl smiled : it would be a delight, 
 she thought, to see any kind of volcanic 
 eruption that could break up the imperturb- 
 able self-possession and the reserve of Mr. 
 Paul Hollis Warren. To Uncle Peter the 
 smile meant encouragement, and he left his 
 rocking-chair, coming over to sit at the 
 girl's side that he might talk more freely ; 
 but the nearer he came the louder he spoke. 
 His philosophy was in a specially gloomy 
 state to-day, partly because his suspicion 
 that Paul was about to wrong him in money 
 matters was becoming a fixed idea in his 
 mind, partly because he was conscious of be- 
 ing less fastidiously dressed than usual, on 
 an occasion when he naturally wished to 
 appear at his best. Frances watched him 
 with eyes in which the look of amuse- 
 ment was giving way to one of distress.
 
 140 
 
 How could she let this funny little old man 
 go on saying things that nobody ought to 
 say ? How could she stop him ? 
 
 " Paul 's a good boy enough, but I am 
 beginning to have my doubts about Well, 
 there is no use in talking ; ladies are n't 
 usually interested in business matters. He 
 used to have the Warren temper : I remem- 
 ber seeing him as a child of fourteen months 
 try to beat his brains out on the floor be- 
 cause he could not get what he wanted. 
 There have been few indications of that 
 lately, but he has the seeds of melancholia, 
 as anybody can see. However, it is a gifted 
 family ; now you did not know, did you, 
 that we have a poetess among our ancestors ? 
 Ellen Wilton, Mary Ellen Wilton. She wrote 
 poems, hymns ; in the house I can show you 
 her portrait, and her book, which is bound 
 in red velvet with gilt clasps. Such things 
 never die out in a family, you know, and I 
 sometimes think I have a touch of her in 
 me. I am certainly very susceptible to to
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 141 
 
 influences ; " and Uncle Peter shook his with- 
 ered little head mysteriously, as if willing 
 to say more if asked. 
 
 To Frances Wilmot's great relief the oth- 
 ers soon joined them, and the family psy- 
 chology was for a time forgotten in discus- 
 sion of interesting objects. The old spinning 
 wheel, the old set of musical glasses, the 
 room where the slaves used to cook their 
 supper, and where the great crane still hung 
 behind the grim fire-dogs, were displayed 
 by Uncle Peter with no less pride than that 
 which he felt in displaying the family faults. 
 
 Paul Warren missed it all. Coming home 
 late in the afternoon, very tired, and driv- 
 ing slowly over the grass-grown road past 
 the old house, he caught the sound of Uncle 
 Peter's voice as it came rippling out through 
 the low, old-fashioned windows. , 
 
 "So I say that Nature sinned against 
 me, for she gave me no personality of my 
 own. She made me merely an empty shell 
 to be tenanted by any bygone creature who
 
 142 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 chooses to inhabit me. And do you know, I 
 am convinced that it is the same with the 
 others. There 's my nephew, Paul, for in- 
 stance, you must pardon me if I bring 
 him in often as an illustration, but he is the 
 only one I have left to study now, I con- 
 tinually observe the same phenomena taking 
 place in him." 
 
 Paul had stopped his horse, and he heard 
 the sound of suppressed laughter that fol- 
 lowed his uncle's words. Then came the 
 notes of Frances Wilmot's beautiful voice : 
 " But you know, Mr. Warren, that is all non- 
 sense." The young man grasped the whole 
 ironic situation, and touching his horse 
 sharply with the whip, drove on, unobserved 
 by any eyes except those of Alice Bevanne. 
 He caught their look, half halted, then went 
 his way, being in no mood to play just then 
 the part of host. 
 
 " She will not tell them that I am here," 
 he said to himself ; and she did not. 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Frances Wilmot, with
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 143 
 
 a little groan of relief, as Uncle Peter, hear- 
 ing the sound of wheels, hurried away to 
 find his nephew, and left his guests alone. 
 
 "It's as interesting as a play," said Mr. 
 Bevanne, with a little burst of smothered 
 laughter. " You do find the most amazing 
 absurdities in human nature up this way." 
 
 " It was shameful," said the Southern girl 
 vehemently. " I feel as if the family skele- 
 ton had been showing me the closet where 
 he lives." 
 
 As Mrs. Warren entered the room, the 
 three guests realized that the odd situation 
 in which they had been placed had acted 
 like a sudden flashlight in which they could 
 read the expressions of one another's faces 
 with an embarrassing distinctness.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 X 
 
 W HAT did you say, Paul?" asked Mrs. 
 Warren, gently swinging to and fro in a 
 great veranda rocker. " You agree with me 
 that it would be better to make up this quar- 
 rel with the Bevannes ? Oh, I am so glad, 
 so glad ! " and she came over, seated herself 
 on the broad arm of her son's chair, and 
 lightly kissed his forehead. " Do, and for- 
 get those dreadful words your father said ; 
 it is more Christian so. You are a good boy, 
 and always were." 
 
 Paul looked at her with thoughtful, non- 
 committal eyes ; truth to tell he was a bit 
 ashamed that reconciliation with the family 
 enemy cost him so little. Could he identify 
 himself with nothing, not even a family feud ? 
 " It can't be done ! " chirped Uncle Peter 
 from the railing. " What gets into the blood
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 11,5 
 
 stays there, and you will find that the War- 
 ren-Bevanne quarrel is n't over yet." 
 
 " We can at least make the experiment," 
 said Paul quietly. 
 
 " I was afraid you might not like their 
 coming here the other day ; I invited them 
 almost without thinking," said Mrs. Warren. 
 
 " It was a matter of perfect indifference to 
 me," responded the young man, with a touch 
 of regret. " Would n't it be well to invite 
 them to luncheon? Your friend Miss Wil- 
 mot would probably find it more pleasant 
 with some young people about. Of course 
 we cannot make it gay for her this summer, 
 nor would she want that." 
 
 Mrs. Warren lightly touched her son's 
 hair with her hand. 
 
 " l Your friend ' ! " she said reproachfully. 
 " Why not yours ? Why don't you like her ? " 
 
 " I don't dislike her," said Paul magnani- 
 mously. " But do not try to make a young 
 man out of me, mother ; I think I must have 
 had gray hair when I was born."
 
 146 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Why, you did n't have a single hair, 
 Paul," she exclaimed. 
 
 "I mean I had gray hair inside." 
 
 "Sometimes," remarked Uncle Peter, tak- 
 ing a cigar from his pocket, "sometimes, 
 Paul, I think you are out of your mind. 
 You say the strangest things, with the least 
 sense in them ! As for this girl, you must 
 be blind, but of course you always were 
 that, or you would see that she is one of 
 the loveliest creatures that ever walked the 
 earth. I declare, I wish I were thirty ! " 
 
 "I'm afraid that you have made her dis- 
 like you, Paul dear," said his mother, her 
 hand upon his shoulder. " I notice that she 
 never speaks to you if she can help it." 
 
 " Then it is my duty to provide her with 
 companions whom she does like," said Paul, 
 " and that brings me back to the Bevannes. 
 From some remark she made I imagine she 
 is very much interested in Alice Bevanne." 
 
 " That is odd," said Mrs. Warren ; " but 
 the brother is a very nice young man. What
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 147 
 
 frank eyes he has, and such an open man- 
 ner ! It would be sinful, I think, to keep 
 our old grudges there ! " 
 
 Regarding the luncheon she hesitated, 
 glancing at her gown of black, her fresh 
 sense of recent sorrow causing her to shrink 
 from even so simple a festivity as this ; yet 
 it was in behalf of peacemaking, and that 
 gentle thought won the day. Alice Bevanne 
 and her brother were invited to meet Miss 
 Wilmot, and a Southern fever came upon 
 Aunt Belinda as she made preparations. 
 
 " Honey," she said to Mrs. Warren, " kin 
 I make beaten biscuit ? " 
 
 " Of course ! " said that lady, wondering 
 at the broad smile upon the black face as 
 the old darky fingered her lilac apron. 
 
 " An' fried chicken, an' a Smithfield ham 
 done wid champagne ? I jes' like ter show 
 these No'the'n folks what a rale supper is, 
 an' I know Miss Frances jes' dyin' fo' some 
 beaten biscuit : I kin tell dat by de looks of 
 her. All de years I bin up yer I ain't seen
 
 148 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 no young lady like dat. Her hair jes' nach'- 
 ally straight, ain't it ? " 
 
 If any one was bored when the feast of 
 reconciliation came, that person was not Un- 
 cle Peter. From grave to gay, he ran the 
 whole gamut of his intellectual charms, 
 laughing merrily at his own jests, and wiping 
 his eyes over his own pathetic tales. 
 
 " You don't feel these things as I do, per- 
 haps," he said to Frances Wilmot, to whom 
 he devoted himself. " I am peculiarly sensi- 
 tive, perhaps foolishly so." 
 
 Paul Warren overheard without the quiver 
 of a muscle, after all, one could not bully 
 fate ! His mother mournfully remarked that 
 he exchanged not more than a dozen words 
 with Miss Wilmot ; but Aunt Belinda, who, in 
 her woman's desire for further knowledge, 
 and her cook's desire to watch the apprecia- 
 tion of the feast she had created, had forced 
 the table maid to feign headache and was wait- 
 ing with a grace that belied her bulk, chuckled 
 delightedly to herself as she passed to and fro.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 149 
 
 " Mas'r Paul, he know every which way 
 dat young lady lookin', for all he ain't sayin' 
 nuffin' ; an' her face change ebery time he 
 open his mouf talkin' ter somebody else. I 
 reckon dey act de way a hen an' a snake 
 acts, jes' like dey don't know what to make 
 ob one 'nudder." 
 
 Aunt Belinda had spoken truth, for now 
 and then, across the sound of many voices, 
 the Southern girl's eyes glanced toward 
 Paul, and he became aware that there was 
 a shade of meaning, humorous or sad, which 
 none save he and she understood. It was as 
 if she were drawn against her will, by some 
 doom of nature, to share her appreciations 
 with him, and he found himself waiting for 
 those rare interpretations which escaped the 
 others. 
 
 If the quiet manner of Alice Bevanne 
 wearied Uncle Peter, when he found himself 
 obliged to talk with her for five minutes 
 after luncheon, her brother charmed his host- 
 ess by a slightly exaggerated attention to her
 
 150 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 wishes, which recalled to her the young men 
 she had known in the days of her youth. 
 
 " Mr. Bevanne has acquired the Southern 
 manner," she said to her son when the 
 guests were gone. "But the sister well, 
 she is a lady, but that is all I can say ; she 
 is singularly destitute of charm." 
 
 Paul said nothing; perhaps his mother 
 was right, yet the glance of the girl's lumi- 
 nous eyes, and the depth of expression in 
 her face, made him wonder if there were not 
 something better than charm in the femi- 
 nine world. At any rate, he found in her a 
 refuge from her brother, whom he treated 
 with an excess of courtesy that boded dislike 
 on further acquaintance. Searching for a 
 cause for this desire to keep a measured dis- 
 tance between himself and Alec Bevanne, 
 he failed to find it. To the best of his belief 
 it was not the old enmity, which in all 
 earnestness he was trying to end ; he could 
 detect no reason save an instinctive differ- 
 ence in taste.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 151 
 
 " Five hundred years ago," Paul said to 
 himself as he strolled up and down the walk 
 late in the afternoon, " I suppose I should 
 have killed the man simply and perhaps de- 
 voutly for the sake of the feud, and a hun- 
 dred years ago I should have fought a duel 
 with him, but now I have no impulse except 
 to be decently polite to him, and to keep 
 out of his way. No family quarrel ought 
 to be intrusted to a man with a sense of 
 humor ! " 
 
 Truth to tell, Paul Warren was sore over 
 a lack of grievance. Alec Bevanne had not, 
 as he had expected, overwhelmed Miss Wil- 
 mot with his attentions, but had had the 
 good taste to spend his engaging efforts on 
 his hostess. 
 
 " I declare ! " said Paul to himself, stop- 
 ping abruptly in his walk, " I believe I am 
 sorry that the man is not a cad ! " 
 
 In the summer days that followed, these 
 four people were much together. From the 
 gay life of the few guests at Wahonet, Fran-
 
 152 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 ces Wilmot was cut off by her sorrow, as 
 the Bevannes were by their poverty, and 
 as Paul Warren was by his own desire. The 
 latter, from his apathy in regard to human 
 beings, whose presence usually roused in him 
 a feeling of loneliness unknown in solitude, 
 wakened to a certain interest in his new 
 friends. 
 
 One morning there was a prolonged knock 
 upon Mrs. Warren's door, and when per- 
 mission was given, Aunt Belinda entered, 
 gorgeous in yellow calico, but wearing an 
 expression of alarm that seemed to blanch 
 still further the whites of her eyes and her 
 gleaming teeth against their dusky back- 
 ground. 
 
 " Mis' Emily, whar 's Mas'r Paul gone, 
 wid all dem picks and spades?" she de- 
 manded. 
 
 " Picks and spades ! " repeated Mrs. War- 
 ren, looking up from her writing desk with 
 mild surprise upon her face. 
 
 " Yes, honey, picks and spades," repeated
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 153 
 
 Aunt Belinda tragically. The voice, soft and 
 deep, ran the words together in a long, 
 mournful, cadenced wail which sounded like 
 the expression of an animal's grief. 
 
 " I never see no sech goin's on sence I 
 came up yer. Mas'r Paul's paw never 
 touched none of them things ; now he bin 
 an' gone an' pruned de laylock bushes, 
 workin' jes like any field han'. Look out 
 o' dat winder an see him now ! " 
 
 Mrs. Warren rose and looked anxiously 
 out. There, striding across the July fields 
 with a quicker tread than that of his old 
 solitary tramps, was Paul, carrying over one 
 shoulder a bundle of golf clubs. A happy 
 smile crossed the mother's face. 
 
 " Why, Belinda ! " she exclaimed, " that 's 
 not work ! It is golf, a game." 
 
 " A play game ? " asked the colored 
 woman skeptically. 
 
 "A play game, yes," answered Mrs. 
 Warren, laughing joyously, " and you must 
 be as glad as I that at last he is getting
 
 154 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 interested in the things that belong to his 
 years." 
 
 A broad smile illuminated Aunt Belinda's 
 dark face. 
 
 " Co'se I 'se glad," she said heartily, " ef 
 it's a play game, sho 'nuff, but it looks 
 mighty like it was common work to me." 
 
 But as the days went on, the old colored 
 woman watched him with delight. 
 
 " Mas'r Paul jes' wakin' up to know he 's 
 alive ! " she muttered one day. " Jes' readin', 
 thinkin', what 's dat for a man ! " 
 
 It was true that Paul Warren found an 
 unwonted charm in things hitherto obnox- 
 ious, sharing an occasional drive, on which, 
 through all the talking and the laughter, he 
 heard cadences of one voice sweeter than 
 the rest; or a long tramp over some /wind- 
 ing road shaded from the sun by drooping 
 branches, where, between dark tree trunks, 
 they watched the sunlit green on the fields 
 beyond. Whole occasional days were de- 
 voted to enjoyment; dust gathered on the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 155 
 
 library table, and Robin, stealing in unob- 
 served on his old quest, chewed up the sec- 
 ond and third heads of an essay on Herbert 
 Spencer. When at last he invited his friends 
 to share with him the one amusement of 
 his old days of solitude, sailing across the 
 waves in his cherished Sea Gull, it seemed 
 to his mother, as well as to himself, that 
 the last wall of his reserve was breaking 
 down. He awakened often in the morning 
 to a wonderful lightness of heart, which some- 
 times lingered with him through the long 
 summer hours, and old troubles grew to be 
 at times like half-forgotten stories of child- 
 hood, which it was hard to recall. For the 
 first time in his life, Paul Warren made a 
 truce with his soul. 
 
 Between him and his mother's friend, the 
 Southern girl, was an armed peace. Upon 
 all about him she had laid her spell. Uncle 
 Peter frankly rendered her the homage of 
 his withered heart ; Mrs. Warren was living 
 again in her a girl's life, and one happier
 
 than her own had ever been ; Aunt Belinda 
 still cherished with devotion the look which 
 had greeted her beaten biscuit ; and Alec 
 Bevanne wore his admiration as an open 
 secret in his blue eyes. Only Robin Hood 
 and Paul withstood the enchantress, the 
 former with the expression of accusing grief 
 wherewith he repelled all humankind, the 
 latter with a rather strict observance of the 
 compact of silence, for certain moments in 
 her presence had brought him a sharp sense 
 of danger, and a more formal courtesy was 
 wont to mark his efforts to keep out a foe 
 who might disturb the little inner quiet he 
 had achieved. Yet their surface intercourse 
 in the presence of others was full of charm 
 for him, and in minor matters he submitted 
 to her management with a meekness which 
 no one had ever before discovered in him. 
 It was she who undertook his education in 
 golf. 
 
 " You think too hard about it," she said 
 laughingly one day. "Just go by instinct
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 157 
 
 and strike. You play too intellectual a 
 game, Hamlet ! " 
 
 In spite of his obedience in the matter of 
 golf-playing, of which he knew nothing, and 
 in the matter of riding, which he understood 
 better than she, he left Miss Wilmot usually 
 with a puzzled sense that he was master of 
 the situation. Through all the silences, a 
 sense of his splendid gift and his strength 
 was strong upon her, perhaps because of the 
 enigmatic eyes which watched and studied, 
 for the man's mind was hard at work upon 
 this baffling personality which he did not 
 comprehend. It might be because he knew 
 nothing of women that she puzzled him so, 
 yet he half divined the fact that no other 
 woman would puzzle him as this one did. 
 A minute's conversation with her on some 
 rounded height of the green golf course, or 
 under flickering sunlight and shadow at the 
 turning of a woodland way, sometimes came 
 as a flash of light, revealing her sane, sweet, 
 and strong, one who would face loneliness
 
 158 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 and gayety and pleasure and hurt with the 
 same fearless eyes, winning joy from the 
 heart of pain ; the next minute she was her 
 old, elusive self again, escaping. 
 
 " I am a problem to which there is n't any 
 answer, Mr. Warren," she said one day, 
 quietly watching him as he watched her. 
 " Don't try to think me out ! If you get 
 the answer and put down your analysis cor- 
 rectly under heads one, two, and three, it 
 will not be right ! " 
 
 So gentle, yet so spirited, so keen in 
 judgment, yet so quickly touched to sensi- 
 tive feeling, young in many ways, yet at 
 some points older in wisdom than Mother 
 Eve and the serpent together, he said whim- 
 sically to himself, would no one read him 
 the riddle of this woman ? 
 
 Those rare moments of silent understand- 
 ing came oftenest when, dancing over the 
 waves in the Sea Gull, with the spray in 
 their faces, the joy of swift motion in the 
 girl's eyes, the rhythm of her body, the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 159 
 
 sweep of her wind-blown hair, thrilled him 
 with a new sense of the meaning of the 
 words she had spoken half in jest about her 
 living at the heart of the great tides.
 
 160 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 XI 
 
 JLLATLESS, short-skirted, with brave, swing- 
 ing step, two girls were walking over the 
 wide upland of the Wahonet golf course, 
 clubs in hand, intent on the game. Ahead, 
 the long grassy slopes were broken here and 
 there by the sharp outlines of slim cedar 
 trees, giving, in the way the dull green cut 
 the blue, a suggestion of Italy's cypresses 
 standing against a sky of deeper tone. Far 
 and near they grew, trooping in long lines 
 up the side of a hill, or standing by crum- 
 bling stone fences, and they lent a certain 
 poignant charm to all the landscape. One 
 of the least cedars of all grew invitingly near 
 a great flat gray rock, half buried under run- 
 ning blackberry vines and low fern. The 
 temptation was too much for Frances Wil- 
 mot, and she sank down on the stone in
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 161 
 
 happy weariness, leaning gratefully against 
 the little tree. 
 
 " Do you think anything bad will happen 
 if we rest a few minutes ? " she demanded, 
 and by way of answer Alice Bevanne followed 
 through the fern tangle and sat down by 
 her side. Frances noted with delight that 
 the girl's fair hair and faintly flushed cheeks 
 looked somewhat demoralized by fresh air 
 and exercise. 
 
 " Why is it," Alice asked shyly, " that 
 you always bring an atmosphere of your own 
 to everything ? It seems to me that you live 
 apart in a world of wonder and mystery, 
 where the beautiful things come true." 
 
 " I live in the same world you live in," 
 said Frances Wilmot, laughing, and placing 
 on the pale hair a poet wreath of green fern 
 leaves ; but the crowned head shook in 
 slow dissent. 
 
 " You have some enchanted sense of 
 things, and you would be just like the prin- 
 cess of the fairy stories if "
 
 162 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " If " 
 
 " You are too wise. You look like the 
 princess, but 1 am more like her inside, for 
 I can only feel, and you can think, too. And 
 then you change too much for the prin- 
 cess, for she always wears the same sweet 
 smile, while you are never quite the same 
 twice." 
 
 " Perhaps I have a touch of the dragon 
 and a dash of the old witch," suggested 
 Frances. 
 
 " You are different with different people," 
 said Alice sagely. " With me you are always 
 sweet and serious and real, but when other 
 people are near you keep saying little keen, 
 humorous things as if you weren't in ear- 
 nest, and I always wonder why." 
 
 " Nature, little Alice," said the Southern 
 girl, bending to kiss the parted hair, " has 
 given to each animal some protective armor : 
 to the tortoise, its shell ; to the porcupine, 
 its quills ; why should woman be left defense- 
 less?"
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 163 
 
 " There ! " cried Alice triumphantly, " that 
 is just the look I mean. It is the expression 
 you have well, when you talk to Alec, for 
 instance." 
 
 " I did not know it," said Frances Wilmot 
 gravely, and even as she spoke she saw him 
 far off on the green slope, coming slowly to- 
 ward them. They waited in silence on the 
 rocks, watching. 
 
 To Alice Bevanne the sojourn of this 
 Southern girl at the Emerson Inn was like 
 a dream come true. She had lived the 
 twenty years of her life in an old yellow 
 house on a crossroad, set, with a row of lo- 
 cust trees at one side, at the end of a drive- 
 way of broken poplars. Year after year the 
 paint had worn away from the house, and 
 the branches had fallen from the scraggly 
 trees. Prosperity had long deserted the 
 Bevanne homestead ; what little money 
 there was had to be devoted to Alec's edu- 
 cation, and there was not enough even to 
 send the fair-haired daughter of the house
 
 164 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 to boarding-school. All that was left her 
 the invalid mother bestowed upon her child, 
 -the training of a gentlewoman, and her 
 hardly acquired sense of the peace of let- 
 ting go. 
 
 Frances Wilmot, one of the rare women 
 on whom the gift of happiness and the gift 
 of sympathy have been bestowed at the 
 same time, had divined the whole story after 
 one quick glance at the worn carpets and 
 the pale faces of mother and daughter, and 
 Alice was brought to share, so far as was pos- 
 sible, the Southern girl's free life of wood 
 and shore. Frances must have some one to 
 ride with her ; would Alice mind learning ? 
 The woodland roads were surpassingly beau- 
 tiful, and Mr. Phipps happened to have in 
 his stable one horse that would be just right 
 for a beginner. Alice made merry with the 
 guests who danced in gowns of pink or white 
 or green at the Inn under the dull rafters in 
 the evening, or tossed out over the waves 
 in white-sailed boats, following the flight of
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 165 
 
 the gulls, or drove through long mornings 
 by hidden roads where ferns dipped their 
 pale green fronds into tiny brooks trickling 
 over the wayside rocks. No motion that her 
 hostess made escaped her ; the young girl's 
 eyes followed her with a look that enveloped 
 her as with sunshine. Whether she wakened 
 the place to music, or arranged flowers in 
 just the right places, great bowls of yellow 
 roses against deep blue or dull green porti- 
 eres, or clusters of fern against the yellow 
 wall, Alice Bevanne watched and under- 
 stood. Color and fragrance and beauty 
 flooded the starved little life. 
 
 "Who owns all this ?" asked Frances Wil- 
 mot, as the young man strolled up, fresh and 
 smiling in his well-cut golf suit of gray 
 cheviot. 
 
 " Oh, our friends the Warrens," he an- 
 swered, throwing himself upon the grass near 
 by. " Nearly half the county belongs to 
 them. I used to call the estate ' Bare-acres/ 
 after Thackeray, you know, only I spelled it
 
 166 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 B-e-a-r. To tell the truth, the elder Mr. War- 
 ren was something of a bear. And speaking 
 of the Warrens, it is a great pleasure to us 
 to think that such friendly relations have 
 been established ; I cannot help feeling that 
 it is in some way partly due to you. They are 
 old enemies of ours, hereditary, you know ; 
 it 's a sort of a Montague and Capulet affair." 
 
 " If you go on like this," said Frances, 
 with the sudden flash of her smile across a 
 face alive with mischief, " I shall have to 
 bring a book of ' One Hundred Useful Liter- 
 ary Allusions ' in order to understand you. I 
 have n't a doubt I could find one at the Inn." 
 
 Then she was sorry, not because the young 
 man's face changed, but because she caught 
 Alice Bevanne's eyes, which always gave her 
 a look of knowing more than she ought of 
 hidden human motive. 
 
 " I did not know that there had been en- 
 mity," she said hastily. "What caused it? 
 Did some very early wicked Warren lay 
 hands on his neighbors' barns ? "
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 167 
 
 Alec Bevanne shook his head. 
 
 " Nobody knows the whole story, but from 
 early days there has been outspoken en- 
 mity, and as boys young Warren and I struck 
 out, like many warriors of larger growth, 
 in a quarrel which we did not understand. 
 It has always been more or less of a mys- 
 tery, though I believe it began with some- 
 thing akin to murder, certainly with blood- 
 shedding." 
 
 " I think it was some dispute about land," 
 suggested Alice Bevanne. 
 
 " It is really very nice of them to be so 
 friendly," said the young man. " And are n't 
 they interesting as a family ! Mrs. Warren 
 is charming." 
 
 " I won't tell him that the impression is 
 mutual, because he oughtn't to be talking 
 about them," mused Frances Wilmot. 
 
 " I find Uncle Peter a perpetual delight as 
 a study, and I marvel at their patience with 
 him. Young Warren is a fine fellow. I like 
 that touch of the ancestral bear in him,
 
 don't you ? though it is rather a pity that he 
 has cut himself off from all social life." 
 
 " I really had not thought about it," said 
 the girl coldly. " I 'm not very well ac- 
 quainted with Mr. Warren. He seems to 
 belong to a type of man that is fast dying 
 out ; and personally I like it better than the 
 kind that plays the guitar and reads Ouida. 
 He is a very quiet person." 
 
 "He's tremendous down under," said 
 Alice Bevanne, " like some smothered ele- 
 mental force, perhaps a tidal wave that 
 has n't got started." 
 
 Frances looked quickly at her with puz- 
 zled eyes. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " said Alec Bevanne. " That 's 
 just what he is n't ! He 's a man that has 
 worn all the elemental forces out of himself, 
 studying. Dresses oddly, does n't he ? " 
 
 Frances Wilmot looked lazily across the 
 sunlit field and yawned. 
 
 " Mr. Warren looks as if his ancestors 
 had been well enough dressed to allow him
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 169 
 
 to be a bit oblivious in regard to his clothes. 
 Let 's change the subject : don't you like 
 these old rocky, fern-haunted New England 
 fields, with their ' gadding vines ' and their 
 silences ? There is nothing like them any- 
 where." 
 
 A tiny wild rabbit crept round the edge of 
 a rock not far away, and stood, all a-quiver, 
 with front paws slightly lifted, gazing with 
 eyes that begged to know if danger were 
 near. Catching those of Alice Bevanne, it 
 stood, transfixed, and then came softly for- 
 ward as if it had found there an invitation 
 too sweet to be withstood. The beckoning 
 motion of the girl's white hand, however, 
 startled the little wild creature, and it ran 
 a few steps, looking back over its shoulder 
 with a glance that she could not resist, and 
 she was off, halfway across the field, follow- 
 ing the gay feet of her new friend as they 
 leaped capriciously here and there. 
 
 "Alice was always like that," said her 
 brother, as the two watched her. " She can
 
 110 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 tame anything under heaven. I fancy she 
 will come back with bunny riding on her 
 shoulder." 
 
 "I don't wonder," said the girl. "I 
 should go to her if I were wild." 
 
 " Miss Wilmot," said the young man 
 abruptly, " may I consult you on a personal 
 matter ? I know I ought not to intrude, and 
 yet I trust your insight completely." 
 
 " Do you ? " said the girl, surprised, and 
 off her guard. 
 
 " More than you know," he answered 
 warmly. " You know how matters are with 
 me : I 'm in a small place where I have n't 
 half a chance, but where I 've taken a cer- 
 tain hold, have got a sort of influence, you 
 know." 
 
 He looked inquiringly at her ; she nod- 
 ded, and moved the slightest bit farther 
 away upon the stone. 
 
 " Now a good chance has come for me to 
 go to a larger place. It means everything, 
 from the point of view of ambition, you
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 171 
 
 know : more money, wider scope, and, some- 
 thing for which I care very much, charming' 
 social life. But the mud-stricken little town 
 down in Alabama haunts me ; I mean some- 
 thing there, and a few hungry souls have 
 been good enough to say that I mean food 
 to them. Now, what shall I do ? " 
 
 The bright blue eyes were full of elo- 
 quent appeal ; the whole face quivered, per- 
 haps partly with a sense of the moment's 
 dramatic value. 
 
 " I think, Mr. Bevanne," she said slowly, 
 " that the question is one which you ought 
 to ask your own soul and not mine." 
 
 "But a woman sees so much more clearly 
 the spiritual values of things," he answered, 
 wondering at finding a feminine conscience 
 which refused to act as leader to the man in 
 a moral crisis. 
 
 " I think, from the very way you have 
 told me, that you see the spiritual values 
 here very clearly." 
 
 " Perhaps I need a little moral impetus,'*
 
 172 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 he answered. "And I thought you might 
 be interested ; it is the South, you know." 
 
 " I should be sorry to bring undue influ- 
 ence to bear on a man in making him decide 
 the right," said the girl, smiling. " It is a 
 pity to deprive anybody of a chance to show 
 what strength is in him." 
 
 It was Alice Bevanne, coming back with- 
 out the gray rabbit, who rescued him from 
 the embarrassment caused by a girl's refusal 
 to take a personal attitude toward his pre- 
 dicament ; and the rescue was no less grate- 
 ful to Frances than to him. She rose, hold- 
 ing out both hands to her friend. 
 
 " You have saved us from abstractions ; 
 now let 's use our muscles." 
 
 The caddy rose from the ground, where 
 he had been lying at a discreet distance, 
 shouldered his burden, and led them to pas- 
 tures new.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 178 
 
 XII 
 
 J.JAZILY Paul Warren paced the garden 
 paths, his hands loosely clasped behind him, 
 warm sunshine on his untroubled face. To 
 the young recluse these summer days were 
 like the coming in of sudden light on life, 
 for it was as if, from mazes and tangles of 
 the mind, he had chanced suddenly upon 
 a world of beauty, where unseen paths lay 
 clear. The rare sunlight of a yet undiscov- 
 ered youth dawned for him on sea and dis- 
 tant mountain toward the north, and the 
 dear green meadows between; and he sniffed 
 the roses about the old porch with the feel- 
 ing that a new sense had been granted him. 
 Slowly he was learning to understand all 
 things that live : the old dog, stretched out 
 on the sun- warmed step ; the cows, wander- 
 ing over fresh green grass, or standing knee-
 
 174 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 deep in placid water; the wood thrushes 
 calling to each other in the cool of late 
 afternoon. There was an amazing simpli- 
 city, after all, about the great lesson of 
 beauty ; and the old, old, elemental truths, 
 which had been true all the time he had 
 been thinking, were his at last. 
 
 The woman who had roused him from his 
 melancholy was naturally much in his mind ; 
 and when he met her by the box border of 
 one of the ancestral flower beds, he was 
 hardly conscious that the picture in his mind 
 had changed to that of actual vision. 
 
 "I am afraid that I am intruding," she 
 said as she faced him. " Some one told me 
 that you were not at home to-day." 
 
 " You never intrude," he answered. 
 
 " The Lady from Boston wanted to make 
 a polite call, and I came with her. I 've es- 
 caped for a few minutes to see about a fern 
 that Andrew promised me. I am very fond 
 of the garden, you know." 
 
 " Women and gardens," he observe d ?
 
 " have always had a peculiar affinity, from 
 the dawn of time." 
 
 She did not deign to answer him for a 
 moment, but stood, silently fingering the 
 petals of a great tiger lily, which grew erect 
 and tawny among its fellows. 
 
 " That reproach," she said at length, 
 " comes badly from either man or the ser- 
 pent. Which part are you playing ? " 
 
 By way of answer he merely laughed, 
 and side by side they wandered down the 
 long path in silence. It was a hazy July 
 afternoon, a day for the weaving of dreams 
 or the casting of spells. Through the warm 
 air came the murmur of bees, and the wind 
 that touched the eyelids was fresh and sweet 
 from the sea. 
 
 " What are you thinking ? " asked the 
 girl at length. 
 
 " I was merely wondering," he answered, 
 stopping by a row of sweet peas that fluttered 
 like butterflies pausing on wings of purple 
 or rose color or white by the dull cedar
 
 176 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 hedge, "if Adam saw the flowers of the 
 Garden before Eve was created." 
 
 " Perhaps the apple blossoms," said 
 Frances mischievously, and with that they 
 came to an old apple tree, standing, gray- 
 green, against a soft blue sky, its branches 
 alive with the murmur of wind and of sea. 
 
 " Did it ever occur to you, Thinker," she 
 demanded, " that the tree of knowledge 
 was not the tree of life ? Did you know 
 that there were two in the Garden of 
 Eden?" 
 
 "No," he admitted. "I was taught but 
 one." 
 
 " I thought so ! " she cried triumphantly. 
 "That partly accounts for you. But they 
 were distinct and separate, and, so far as I 
 
 9 
 
 can tell, our forefathers and foremothers 
 might have gone on forever eating of the 
 tree of life if they had not eaten of the 
 tree of knowledge first. Oh, I can forgive 
 them for eating, but I cannot forgive them 
 for choosing the wrong tree."
 
 He plucked a little hard green apple and 
 gave it to her. 
 
 "Serpent!" she said, as she turned it 
 over and over in the palm of her white hand. 
 " Knotty, and hard, and sour, from the tree 
 of knowledge. If they had only known 
 enough to nibble one wee bit from the 
 leaves of the tree of life ! " 
 
 " Living forever in a garden would have 
 been a bit wearisome, would n't it ? " he 
 ventured. 
 
 " Living, no ! " she said, with a little stamp. 
 " Thinking, groping about, yes. Please shut 
 your eyes." 
 
 He did so. 
 
 " What do you hear ? " 
 
 " Bees, and soft waves, and a voice that 
 is like music." 
 
 " What do you see ? Keep your eyes 
 shut." 
 
 "A shimmer of blue and of green, with 
 the flowers of the garden resting against it ; 
 and what else I see I shall not tell."
 
 178 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 The girl nodded with satisfaction. 
 
 " You are coming to your senses, Ghost," 
 she said. " I mean, in the real, not the usual, 
 acceptance of the term." 
 
 Not far from the apple tree, in a quiet 
 corner where a few straggling scarlet pop- 
 pies burned on the summer air, was an old 
 wooden rustic seat, and Frances Wilmot 
 dropped into it with a sigh of pleasure. 
 
 " The Lady from Boston has n't finished 
 looking over the old punch bowls yet: do 
 you think she has ? " 
 
 " I am sure she has not," said Paul War- 
 ren, sitting down on the grass, with a like 
 sense of weariness and of delight. " Did it 
 ever occur to you that your wisdom is based 
 too much on mere temperament ? " 
 
 "And what is your philosophy," she re- 
 torted, " but temperament in a formula ? " 
 
 He laughed, the sudden laugh of sheer 
 pleasure that nothing but this girl's sauci- 
 ness had ever won from him. 
 
 "It is a story-book day," said Frances
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 179 
 
 Wilmot, following with her eyes the motion 
 of the slow white clouds on the horizon. 
 " It is the kind of a day that makes you feel 
 that beautiful things will happen : the giant 
 will forget his plan of having little boys and 
 girls for supper, and the dragon will dream 
 instead of going a-hunting." 
 
 " Tell me a story," said the man, from the 
 grass. 
 
 " I did not know you cared for them." 
 
 "You evidently do not know me," he 
 answered. 
 
 Leaning back she pondered, the flicker- 
 ing light and shadow of a slim young locust 
 falling on her bare head, and after a few 
 minutes began : 
 
 " Once upon a time there was a land beau- 
 tiful beyond the power of the tongue to say, 
 with soft green meadows where deep grass 
 waved all day long in summer, and strag- 
 gling fences where slim poplars stood, white, 
 with a shower of pale green leaves against 
 the blue sky. It had a long coast line, curv-
 
 180 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 ing beach of yellow sand and high-piled, dull 
 red rocks or gray between the blue of the 
 water and the green of the meadows by the 
 sea. Somewhere there were mountains all 
 softly wooded, and there were loveliest pas- 
 ture lands green and gray. Over it all blos- 
 somed flowers, crocus and violet and may- 
 flower in the spring, and pink wild roses 
 and scarlet poppies in summer, and golden- 
 rod with the coming of fall. 
 
 " Now, it was a land on which there was 
 a spell. Some old irony of the gods lay 
 across it like a mocking smile, and its beauty 
 of color and of sound when the sea sang round 
 it and the wind murmured in the trees 
 beauty to the breaking of the heart was 
 holden from the people who lived there. 
 The fates which preside over the puzzles of 
 men's hearts had set this folk to weaving 
 little webs all out of their own brains : little 
 gray gossamer webs which they kept tying, 
 tying across their eyes ; fine little webs of 
 brown which they kept weaving, weaving
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 181 
 
 across their ears ; heavy webs of slaty drab 
 with which they covered their fingers, so 
 that eyes and ears and finger tips were 
 blinded. Day after day and year after year 
 they sat in their houses and spun and spun 
 and wove and wove, all in the dark; and 
 they moved along the sweet green leafy 
 lanes with groping hands, and the bobolinks 
 went mad on the meadow grasses because 
 they could not make men hear, and the 
 little winds sighed and wailed because men 
 were deaf to the music that they made in 
 the leaves, and the blue of the sky and the 
 blue of the sea met in sorrow because men 
 were blind. Then the fates which preside 
 over the puzzles of men's hearts leaned back 
 and chuckled, for of all the games that they 
 could play they liked the Tantalus game 
 the best." 
 
 As the girl's voice ceased, a great bum- 
 ble-bee took the story up and noisily added a 
 few remarks ; a tiny yellow warbler chirped 
 a few notes, and the little breeze in the lo-
 
 cust whispered a few bits of story, until the 
 man sitting on the grass continued the tale. 
 
 " So it lasted until one day a wise en- 
 chantress came wandering up the shore. 
 She was a lazy enchantress who neither 
 toiled nor spun, but walked idly through 
 the meadows while all good maids and ma- 
 trons were busy with their webs." 
 
 " Why did she come ? " asked Frances. " I 
 like to have everything definite in my sto- 
 ries." 
 
 " For mischief," he answered, " to break 
 up the gray color and to upset the old order 
 which was so comfortable and so even." 
 
 " Which way did she come ? " There was 
 a touch of defiance in the voice that asked 
 the question. 
 
 " She came from the South, trailing her 
 long robes after her ; and though she was 
 all in white, there was always about her an 
 iridescence of color, as if her beauty broke 
 the white light a thousand ways, to gold 
 and violet and crimson and blue."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 183 
 
 " I should never have supposed that you 
 could tell a fairy story so well," said Frances, 
 yawning. 
 
 " I am quite susceptible to influences of 
 style," he answered, and took up the tale 
 again. 
 
 " They called her the Opener of Doors, 
 for every moment spent with her was like the 
 throwing wide of doors and windows look- 
 ing out on life and beauty. And her voice 
 worked mischief with the hearts of men, for 
 the melody of summer days had got into it : 
 of the wind running through the deep mea- 
 dow grass and making it wave in great 
 ripples; of bees and dragon-flies humming 
 in the warm air; of leaves on poplar tree 
 and locust, vibrating to unseen touches ; and 
 at the sound, thoughts and feelings that 
 had been safely shut up for years ran out 
 through door and window, nor could any 
 one tell that it was not wind and bee and 
 dragon-fly that called. Then she began with 
 her white fingers to untie the webs : the
 
 184 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 gray webs across the eyes, the brown webs 
 across the ears, and the slaty-drab webs 
 wound about the fingers; and the sight of 
 the eyes and the hearing of the ears followed 
 the untying. There was trouble enough in 
 the land when the old ways were undone 
 and this woman had set her touch of wild- 
 ness there ; for there was pain in waking to 
 see the color of the world and to hear its 
 music." 
 
 " I think I don't care to hear about her," 
 said Frances. " She was a troublesome old 
 witch, who meddled too much with other 
 people's affairs." 
 
 " It is not polite to get tired before the 
 story is done," said the story-teller, watch- 
 ing her from the shadow of the locust on the 
 grass ; " and this one is not done, it is only 
 begun." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " sighed the girl. " I never 
 did like my fairy tales too long." 
 
 " Yes, she made trouble," the man went 
 on, " for wherever she went she wakened
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 185 
 
 hunger in men's hearts : hunger for joy, for 
 the gold light on the edge of things, for es- 
 cape from the conscience-haunted, dim, gray, 
 cobwebby world to a land where the heart 
 would not ache with sorrow, and where tears 
 would not come to the eyes." 
 
 " Then she was a poor, ignorant enchan- 
 tress," said the girl softly, " for it is good 
 for tears to come to the eyes : they make 
 the vision of beauty more clear."
 
 186 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 HOOD was hunting for his master. 
 There were certain lanes and far fields where 
 John Warren had loved to walk, which his 
 dog now patrolled faithfully, at irregular in- 
 tervals, hoping to surprise his master there 
 at sunrise or in the late afternoon. He spent 
 only part of his time at the house, sitting 
 always when there at one corner of the great 
 veranda, or lying in the grass near by, where 
 he could watch the long driveway under the 
 overarching elms. Very wistfully he gazed 
 at every carriage that drew near and at the 
 figures that alighted ; never the right one 
 came. The old dog slept lightly, starting 
 up nervously from his dreams if a footfall 
 sounded that had in it any echo of his mas- 
 ter's step, and flinging himself to fuller length 
 on ground or floor when a second echo
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 187 
 
 showed him that he was mistaken, watch- 
 ing, watching, with half opened eyes. He 
 admitted no one to his friendship, the expe- 
 rience through which he was passing seeming 
 to justify his worst suspicions of mankind ; 
 and he gave but uncertain obedience to the 
 people who issued orders to him, for the voice 
 which he knew was right was silenced for- 
 ever, and he listened to these new, unau- 
 thorized commands with a certain skeptical 
 lifting of the ears. 
 
 One day Robin whimpered long at the 
 door of the library, scratching with eager 
 paws and beseeching to be admitted. Paul, 
 who was inside, presently opened the door 
 to him, and the old dog rushed joyfully in, 
 sniffing at chair and table, and at the papers 
 lying on the desk in the corner. 
 
 "Poor old fellow," said Paul, patting his 
 head ; but the dog shrank away suspiciously 
 from the caress : not until John Warren's 
 absence was accounted for should they place 
 cajoling hands on him ! He lay down under
 
 188 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 the desk where Paul was busy with his fa- 
 ther's papers, giving a little whimper now 
 and then as the unfolding of one after an- 
 other brought back to his dog-sense his 
 master's very presence. One yellow folded 
 paper fluttered to the floor as a bundle of 
 letters from the farthest pigeon-hole was un- 
 tied. Robin laid his paws lovingly upon it, 
 and, stretching out his head, half fell asleep, 
 dreaming of happier days. 
 
 Paul was going slowly through his father's 
 papers, shrinking often from the touch, which 
 brought with it a new sense of hurt. He 
 could not bear the sight of the fine, soft dust 
 already gathered there, wearing, he half 
 fancied, a certain symbolic expression which 
 made it differ from the dust gathered on 
 the possessions of the living. Everything 
 was in good order : important mortgages and 
 deeds were in the safe built into the wall 
 behind a swinging bookcase. Here in the 
 desk were only old letters and documents 
 that showed the interests and the plea-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 189 
 
 sures of scores of years ago : faded pro- 
 grammes from Washington theatres of plays 
 given there when John Warren had been 
 congressman ; memoranda of articles to be 
 bought, a copy of Moore's poems, for in- 
 stance, and a diamond ring. Paul smiled as 
 he read the latter item, little likely to be 
 forgotten, and written there probably only 
 in the lover's pleasure in putting down the 
 words. That ring was on his mother's hand 
 to-day. The young man found a thousand 
 hints and suggestions that connected his 
 father's experience with his own : bits of 
 verse that recalled the manuscripts kept 
 under lock and key in his own room ; keen 
 hints of criticism of books lately read, and 
 here and there a faded flower. The look in 
 Robin Hood's blinking eyes and that in his 
 master's were very near akin in tenderness 
 as the work went on ; to John Warren's son 
 it seemed as if he himself had traveled all 
 that long way and were only now remem- 
 bering.
 
 He tied up the bundles neatly, as he had 
 found them, and in doing so for the first 
 time noticed the letter that had fallen to the 
 floor and was lying under the paws of Robin 
 Hood, who whimpered over it mournfully. 
 The old dog growled as it was drawn away ; 
 would they take from him even this last 
 bit of paper that bore his master's touch? 
 As he carelessly opened it the young man 
 quickened to sudden interest and read it, 
 half protesting with himself against his own 
 act. He looked at the signature, and re-read 
 it, then sat gazing at it with the expression 
 of a man on whom light had fallen where he 
 had been groping in the dark. 
 
 It was an impassioned love letter, ap- 
 parently a first avowal, for the words came 
 thick and fast as if they had long been 
 choked back, from the father of Alec 
 Bevanne to Mrs. Warren. It bore the date of 
 the year of her marriage, and must have been 
 written when she was a bride, and when 
 Frederick Bevanne was still a bachelor.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 191 
 
 "Whatever you may say of right and 
 wrong," the hot words ran, "and I know 
 by the look of your sweet face that you 
 will have much to say, I know only this: 
 I cannot live without you, I cannot, I 
 cannot. If I may not be near you, always, 
 while I breathe, I shall fling myself into 
 the ocean. If you will come to me and 
 escape from the prison in which you are 
 shut, I will make your life a long dream of 
 beauty." 
 
 Paul turned the letter over and over in 
 his hands, and caught sight of a brief mem- 
 orandum on the back, written there in faded 
 ink : " Brought me by my wife." 
 
 John Warren's son started as if smitten 
 by a blow, and a thrill of fear ran along his 
 nerves. What might have been, what had 
 been, the effect of this insult upon his father, 
 whose sense of honor had been keen to 
 morbidness, whose anger, when roused, had 
 been unappeasable ? Robin's vague sense of 
 trouble, stimulated by the look on his young
 
 192 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 master's face, broke out into a mournful 
 howl whose echoes sounded full of memories 
 of old quarrels, fierce and never ended. The 
 very clock in the corner seemed touched by 
 the mystery, and ticked away in solemn 
 questions, to which no answer came. Paul 
 searched pigeon-hole and corner for further 
 records which might throw light upon this 
 one, and, finding nothing, almost groaned in 
 relief, glad not to know what had befallen. 
 At last he half understood the look upon his 
 dying father's face, and knew that this had 
 been placed among offenses not to be for- 
 given. 
 
 He picked up the letter in gingerly fashion 
 and flung it into the fireplace, then touched 
 it with a match and watched it turn to 
 black tinder, marveling as he did so at that 
 hot Gallic blood to which love had been 
 as a quick flash in the pan, dangerous, but 
 probably soon over; then he shrugged his 
 shoulders with a gesture of relief. What 
 had he to do with the Bevannes, with old
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 193 
 
 quarrels and old mistakes ? Nothing, and 
 less than nothing. All this had gone away 
 into oblivion, and he would keep no record 
 of refuse bits of experience which were fit 
 for nothing save to be cast out and thrown 
 away. Why must the shadow of the past fall 
 so persistently on present days, he asked him- 
 self with a touch of irritation ? What could 
 burn away from his memory, as the flame 
 had burned the letter, the needless and 
 meaningless pain of all his life ? To the 
 awakened soul within him it seemed as if 
 brave days and kindly deeds and long sunlit 
 spaces might be his portion if but the im- 
 possible could happen and he could forget. 
 
 Outside it was full summer, with all its 
 splendor of deep leafage, of wide fields of 
 golden, ripening grain, and of wild red 
 August lilies blooming in the wayside grass ; 
 but in the heart of the man it was earliest 
 spring, when the first flush of color comes to 
 the topmost twigs, and a ripple of pale green 
 runs along old boughs. He dimly remem-
 
 194 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 bered, as one recalls something observed 
 but not understood, how April came to the 
 old house, stealing in sweet odors down long 
 passageways, and flinging her banners of 
 pink blossom from the decaying peach trees 
 in the garden. A sense came to him of 
 green springing about the feet along worn 
 pathways, of new flickering shadows on ten- 
 der grass, of the beat of bluer wings against 
 the blue. An April mood came knocking at 
 the doorways of his soul, crying out that the 
 past should be but the rich soil in which 
 delicate things might bloom for him, while 
 life became as sudden song from the old 
 eaves at dawn. 
 
 He roused himself from his reverie with 
 an apprehension of danger. Must he not bar 
 window and doorway to shut the intruder 
 out before it was too late ? He paused, in 
 his hand a faded flower that had fallen from 
 his father's papers, and something thrilled 
 through him as the wind thrills through 
 poplar leaves, making music there. His
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 195 
 
 father had been free to love ; why not he ? 
 Ah, no, he was apart from other men and 
 must abide his fate ! What had he to offer 
 that radiant creature, whose voice was as 
 earth's hidden music made audible, and 
 whose dusky hair made a dark glory against 
 the blue of the sky, save the gloom of these 
 old walls, a moody and discouraged lover, 
 and Uncle Peter ? The race was run out, 
 Paul told himself, leaning back in his great 
 leather chair, the old unreasonable habit of 
 accepting the past as final in his life being 
 too strong to break. They had never in their 
 best days made happy homes, these War- 
 rens; now he the last of all, on whom 
 the blighting melancholy of the family had 
 descended, he who was impotent to achieve 
 or to care greatly about achievement 
 would never ask where he could never give. 
 Would young Bevanne win there, he asked 
 himself, for he had long ago divined the 
 secret all too easily betrayed by the ardor 
 of his young neighbor's eyes. Paul grew hot
 
 at the thought, then reflected, not without 
 satisfaction, that a comparatively obscure 
 young college professor would have little 
 chance of winning the Southern beauty. 
 Why was it, he impatiently asked himself, 
 clasping his hands behind his head and 
 thrusting an ottoman away with his foot, 
 that when he fancied himself ready to go 
 out with the olive branch to his father's 
 old enemies, this persistent distrust of the 
 present representative of the family waxed 
 and grew ? The very thought of his young 
 neighbor roused dislike. He objected to the 
 blue eyes, the over-ready smile, the profes- 
 sional vocabulary of long words, the slightly 
 exaggerated courtesy. Paul smiled at him- 
 self, becoming for the moment a disinter- 
 ested spectator of the workings of his own 
 mind. Was his father's fiery indignation 
 against the Bevannes descending upon him, 
 who had all his life long watched it with a 
 feeling of amused pity ? 
 
 Again he came back to his own problem,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 197 
 
 resolved to reason the matter out once for 
 all with his own soul. Of his morbidness in 
 shrinking from the full measure of human 
 existence his intellect was fully aware, yet 
 this did not keep him from a resolve to 
 withhold his hand lest in touching sacred 
 things he should too greatly fail. It was 
 no renunciation of a meagre nature, but of 
 one rich and full, smitten now with a man's 
 hunger and thirst. Aware of the folly of 
 scruples in an age when greatness of success 
 seems proportioned to lack of scruple, and 
 cursing himself as a Puritan born out of his 
 time, he faced his inner fear, fear of bring- 
 ing misery where most he loved, of handing 
 the terrors of the past down to unborn gen- 
 erations to whom life might come as a curse. 
 Wearily he trod his old circle back to his 
 starting-point, wondering again at the deep 
 irony that from those to whom the doing of 
 the right was the one supreme thing the 
 right should be veiled beyond human ken. 
 " Give us more insight, Lord, or less,"
 
 198 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 he groaned aloud, and Robin Hood blinked 
 in understanding. 
 
 Yes, he would retire to the innermost re- 
 cesses of his soul : drawbridge and moat and 
 barricade should be made ready to repel this 
 foe. Then, after fleeing thither, manlike, he 
 courted danger, and came out for parley and 
 for conference, yearning to feel the thrill 
 of peril, and dauntlessly brooding over the 
 quiver of Frances Wilmot's mouth, the rustle 
 of her gown. Think ! He could not think ! 
 Reason and will had departed together; 
 young tendrils seemed touching eye and 
 ear; unseen blossoms opening just beyond 
 his vision ; and all along the trodden paths 
 of thought hid violets in sudden bloom.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 199 
 
 XIV 
 
 JL HERE was an almost paternal solicitude in 
 the feeling of Paul Warren toward Alec Be- 
 vanne, after reading the letter which had 
 betrayed the tragedy of thirty years ago. 
 Sympathy with his own father, whose heart's 
 core had been eaten for so long a time by 
 hidden hatred, mingled with anxiety for this 
 young neighbor, with his inheritance of 
 weakness and of treachery ; and the mea- 
 sure of his pity for the son was the measure 
 of his contempt for the father. For one with 
 a taint like that in his blood the fight to- 
 ward high standards of honor must be hard 
 indeed ; a keener anxiety than he was wont 
 to feel regarding the inner problems of 
 other people possessed him in the presence 
 of this man. 
 
 It was a day of a long sail and of a picnic
 
 200 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 on a white sand beach a dozen miles away. 
 Mrs. Warren had begged for it ; there were 
 peculiar shells to be found there, and the 
 breakers were fine ; did not Paul think that 
 everybody would like it ? Mr. Bevanne had 
 said that it would be charming. Paul, in- 
 wardly groaning, made ready with a cheer- 
 ful face : it was not for him to check, even 
 by a look, the gayety of fifty years. Thus it 
 happened that he found himself piling sticks 
 in company with the son of his father's old 
 enemy, and peacefully boiling water in a cop- 
 per saucepan over the flame that leaped high 
 from the level sand, flickering against the 
 blue ; and he smiled grimly as he took his turn 
 in stirring up the fire with a long oaken staff. 
 " This is what Christianity and civilization 
 have brought us to," he said to himself, hu- 
 morously watching the handsome pink face 
 and the smiling blue eyes. " Instead of my 
 steel at his throat he finds my sandwich in 
 hand, and munches with the happy abandon 
 of six years."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 201 
 
 Gentle pleasure beamed from Mrs. War- 
 ren's sweet blue eyes as she watched her 
 son ; she had never learned to discriminate 
 between his smiles. The new tenderness in 
 his manner toward her lent warmth to the 
 sunshine, and she thrilled with the thought 
 that he and she were making these people 
 happy, happy in the old way of her girl- 
 hood. Unhesitatingly she bade them spread 
 her dainty damask on the white sea sand, and 
 she recklessly placed upon it fragile cups of 
 white and gold taken from an old-fashioned 
 wicker basket. The thin, rosy, flaky ham, 
 the firm, white chicken, the great plums with 
 violet bloom, the early, ruddy peaches, and, 
 above all, the fragrant coffee, satisfied the stan- 
 dard of her earlier days as to what a picnic 
 should be. A rare flush of excited pleasure 
 stained her cheeks : she was glad that Mr. 
 Bevanne was having such a good time devot- 
 ing himself to Miss Wilmot, whom Paul was 
 treating with marked neglect. A girl like that 
 ought always to have young men at her feet.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 It was Uncle Peter, however, to whom 
 the occasion brought the greatest intoxica- 
 tion of delight; he enjoyed himself even 
 enough to talk with Alice Bevanne. 
 
 "You aren't interested in heredity, I 
 believe," he said, as he nibbled the last 
 crumbs of his luncheon from his fringed nap- 
 kin, and looked up at her as she sat above 
 him on a throne of sand. 
 
 " Oh, yes, indeed I am," she answered. 
 
 " I 've never heard you speak of these 
 matters." 
 
 "I'm interested in many things that I 
 don't speak of," she said, laughing. 
 
 " Now, I 'm not," asserted Uncle Peter 
 stoutly. " I believe in opening out to your 
 kind, in giving all you have. Well, you 
 have some splendid bits of history in your 
 family. There's French blood there, as of 
 course you know. You are naturally ac- 
 quainted with the story of your ancestress 
 who played so heroic a part during the 
 Revolutionary War ? "
 
 " Yes," said the girl. 
 
 " Tell it," begged Frances Wilmot from 
 her pile of sand, but Alice Bevanne shook 
 her head. 
 
 " Mr. Warren must tell it ; I should only 
 spoil it." 
 
 Uncle Peter was only too ready. 
 
 " Why, one of the ancestresses of this 
 young lady let me see, it must have been 
 her great-great-grandmother defended a 
 house for a couple of hours against the red- 
 coats and fired again and again with her hus- 
 band's old shooting rifle. Came out of it with 
 her hair partly burned off and her face all 
 smoked, and fell on her husband's neck with 
 her baby in her arms when the rescuing party 
 came ; then she fainted. Touching story, 
 isn't it?" Uncle Peter passed a silk hand- 
 kerchief across his eyes. "I I feel these 
 things very much myself." 
 
 " That 's a beautiful story ! " cried the 
 Southern girl. 
 
 " What did that woman look like ? " asked
 
 204 
 
 Paul, glancing at Alice Bevanne as she sat 
 with her fine profile and smooth, parted hair 
 silhouetted against the blue water. 
 
 " How should I know ? " answered Uncle 
 Peter indignantly. " I was n't alive. You 
 youngsters all think your elders were wit- 
 nesses of what happened before Methuselah 
 was born ! " 
 
 " There are pictures, you know," suggested 
 Paul apologetically. 
 
 " Oh, that is what you mean ! Well, I 
 cannot tell you, but I fancy that she did not 
 look much like this young lady." 
 
 " / fancy that she did," said Frances Wil- 
 mot. 
 
 " Imagine her firing a gun ! " jeered Uncle 
 Peter, looking at the girl's slender hands that 
 hung loosely in her lap. 
 
 " I can fancy her firing a gun, or a powder 
 mine, if it were necessary," said the Southern 
 girl saucily ; " not that she would do it for 
 pleasure." 
 
 Uncle Peter shook his head as he rose.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 205 
 
 " I am afraid that you have not a very 
 deep insight into character; one would 
 hardly expect it of a young lady with so 
 many charms," and he made a deep bow. 
 " Now the reading of character is one of my 
 strong points, and I can see in Miss Bevanne 
 a most devoted domestic personage, but 
 hardly a warrior." 
 
 The girl was looking at them with her 
 humorous little smile, aloof, as if she were 
 the last person to be concerned in this dis- 
 cussion of herself, in which she claimed no 
 place, even by the quiver of an eyelid. 
 
 They turned and went their several ways, 
 to walk on the firm sea sand or to climb the 
 heights beyond the beach. It was a brilliant 
 day, clearest, bluest of all, and the crisp air 
 stung freshly on brow and cheek, while out 
 and out, far as the eye could reach, the great, 
 even breakers came rolling in, falling into 
 white foam, the nearer ones translucent 
 green, the farther purple-tinged. As close to 
 the ripple of the waves as she could safely step
 
 206 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 went Frances Wilmot, gathering, from wet 
 sand or dry, frail white wave-beaten shells, 
 and holding them in her hands with a fine 
 sense of their symbolism. Her sea treasures 
 she heaped at the feet of Mrs. Warren, who 
 sat shading her eyes as she looked out over 
 the great water, wondering why it seemed so 
 much more beautiful and more friendly than 
 of old. 
 
 Meanwhile, wilted and wan, to the top 
 of the grass-grown promontory at the left 
 wearily climbed Uncle Peter, for the gay 
 mood was gone, and the droop of the wrin- 
 kles at the corners of his mouth betrayed the 
 inward man. Always black melancholy sat 
 croaking near, ready to flap her raven wings 
 at slight provocation about Uncle Peter's 
 head, for a time, at least, and she was flap- 
 ping them lustily now, because of Paul's 
 careless question. Paul had broken in upon a 
 mood that was all compact of youth with an 
 inquiry which suggested in him remote age, 
 and this in the presence of Miss Wilmot! It
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE Wt 
 
 was not all resentment against Paul, however, 
 which filled his thought : this momentary 
 conviction of age always brought with it a 
 sense of a life spent without its proper dues. 
 
 It was at the top of the cliff that he met 
 Alec Bevanne, who was having a brief run 
 for exercise, and who stopped, panting, a 
 vivid red coming and going in his cheeks. 
 
 "Aren't you feeling well?" asked the 
 young man, halting as he saw the other's 
 face. 
 
 " As well," answered Uncle Peter, out of 
 the gloom, " as a victim of both God and 
 man could be supposed to feel." 
 
 " Now, Mr. Warren, what have you got 
 against God and man ? " asked Alec Bevanne 
 good-naturedly. He liked Uncle Peter, and 
 always found any kindness shown him more 
 than repaid in amusement. 
 
 The old man folded his arms, uncon- 
 sciously taking the attitude which he had 
 more than once seen assumed by the vil- 
 lain on the stage.
 
 208 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " God has given me an undeserved in- 
 heritance of-^-of tendencies," he remarked, 
 " and man has taken from me the pos- 
 sessions that were mine by hereditary 
 right." 
 
 Alec Bevanne slipped his hand through 
 the misanthrope's arm. 
 
 " Great-great-grandfather Warren trou- 
 bling you to-day ? " he asked jocosely. 
 
 " He is always troubling me," said Uncle 
 Peter. "In my soul of souls I feel him 
 crouching, ready to spring." . 
 
 " Well, what about your other trouble ? 
 Pour it all out, and you will feel better." 
 
 The words were comforting, and the wa- 
 vering mind of Uncle Peter wavered assent. 
 
 " It is something I would not tell every- 
 body, but you have a face to be trusted. 
 I should confide in that face if I met it dis- 
 embodied in the Desert of Sahara ! " 
 
 "All right! Go ahead!" 
 
 "It is about my property," said the old 
 man in a whisper, " wrested, wrested away."
 
 "How's that?" said Alec, drawing him 
 into a brisk walk. 
 
 " Simply defrauded of my birthright, that 
 is all, Mr. Bevanne ! I was the elder son, 
 and yet Paul's father, my younger brother 
 John, got it all, except an annuity to me. 
 When John died I naturally expected some 
 readjustment of affairs, but no ! The same 
 annuity comes, and Paul, it seems, steps into 
 his father's whole estate. There has been 
 fraud somewhere ; now tell me, whose was 
 the fraud ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! You take too dark a view of it. 
 If I were comfortable I should not worry 
 about might-have-beens, though I admit that 
 it looks queer." 
 
 Uncle Peter shook his head and dragged 
 his companion into a slower walk. 
 
 " There 's a mystery somewhere," he said 
 simply ; " I 've suspected it all my life. Lit- 
 tle hints out of my childhood come back : for 
 instance, I remember, when my brother John 
 was born, an occasion which naturally
 
 made a great impression upon me, going 
 into the library and finding my father there 
 with a tall man in black. They had some 
 papers with them, and they stopped talking 
 when I came in. I can remember as dis- 
 tinctly as if it were yesterday how my father 
 put his hand on my head and said something 
 about its being hard on somebody ; I presume 
 the experience through which I was passing 
 made me extraordinarily sensitive to receive 
 and to retain impressions. 
 
 " ' Is he bright ? ' the man said. My fa- 
 ther shook his head. Until then I had 
 thought that they were talking about me, 
 and lately I have begun to suspect, in think- 
 ing it all over, that my first impression was 
 right. The answer that that man made is still 
 vivid in my mind, though it has puzzled me 
 from that day to this : i Then you will have 
 less difficulty in carrying out your plan.' Now, 
 Mr. Bevanne, what do you think of all this?" 
 
 The young man was whistling, and his 
 eyes were filled with amused wonder. Was
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 211 
 
 this some of Uncle Peter's romancing, or had 
 it really happened ? 
 
 "I think," he answered, " that the whole 
 thing is extraordinary, and some time I 
 should like very much to hear more of it. 
 But this is not a picnic mood. Down there 
 I see Mrs. Warren and Miss Wilmot literally 
 wasting their sweetness on the desert sand. 
 Shall we join them ? " 
 
 " Yes, by all means," assented Uncle Peter, 
 with his wrinkled smile. " That 's a charm- 
 ing girl ! Now, if I were you ! " 
 
 " If you were I," said Alec Bevanne, in 
 sudden dejection, " you would probably be 
 as big a fool as I am ; but you are not I, so 
 congratulate yourself." 
 
 It was while this conversation was going on 
 that Paul Warren had climbed the high white 
 sand dune guarding the beach, and had come 
 full upon the tidal river that flowed here be- 
 tween sand-bound banks, blue toward a bluer 
 sea. Long reeds and grasses, washed by tide 
 waters, grew at its edge, and drooping wil-
 
 212 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 lows dipped their pale green fronds into its 
 intense color. There were ripples on its sur- 
 face, and reeds and grasses swayed ; it was 
 a day of strong breeze, and mighty waves, 
 and heroic moods. Idly following the motion 
 of the water, Paul became suddenly aware 
 that Alice Bevanne was leaning against the 
 golden-brown bark of one of the willows not 
 far away, and with the sight of her he sud- 
 denly remembered one of the shadows that 
 lay for him across the sun. Unobtrusively 
 he watched her, full of a wistful desire to 
 atone to her, through some finer shade of 
 courtesy, for having had a father like that. 
 To him she was as perfect an enigma as he 
 had ever found, aloof, silent when he was 
 near, she often watched him with those won- 
 derful eyes which seemed to make her face 
 all vision, yet persistently avoided him, prob- 
 ably because she could not so soon forget the 
 family hate. Now, leaning as with the sud- 
 den abandon of utter weariness against the 
 tree, with her hands clasped about the bark,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 213 
 
 she was looking down into the river. Soft 
 gleams of brown and of gold came from its 
 pebbled depths ; green reflections from the 
 feathery leaves above quivered there, where 
 the blue of the sky was mirrored back in 
 softer, tenderer blue. So intent was the gaze 
 of the girl's eyes that Paul could almost 
 have believed her to be holding communi- 
 cation with some water spirit of the stream. 
 The whole slender figure wore a curious 
 expression, like the look he had more 
 than once seen in her eyes, as of one 
 who asked nothing and expected nothing, 
 not even to understand. She had the face 
 of one whom no fate could find unpre- 
 pared. 
 
 " I must beg your pardon for disturbing 
 you," he said, going near her. She looked 
 up at him, unsmiling. 
 
 "You do not disturb me," she answered. 
 
 Something in the deep light of her eyes, 
 which had failed to change so quickly the 
 expression they had worn in gazing into the
 
 214 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 water, arrested him, and he paused on the 
 bank. 
 
 " Miss Bevanne," he said, and then stopped 
 abruptly. 
 
 "Yes?" asked the girl. 
 
 " There is something that I have wanted 
 for a long time to say to you, and it has been 
 difficult, for we are both a little shy," he 
 said, with a boldness which dumbfounded 
 himself. She did not answer him, but waited. 
 "You know something of the old enmity 
 between your family and mine ? " 
 
 She bent her head in assent, and the 
 strange, pale gold of her hair seemed to make 
 a light about her. 
 
 "I hope," he added hesitatingly, "that for 
 you, as for me, it is over. I hope that you 
 do not share the old feeling, or connect it 
 with me ? " 
 
 The ghost of a little smile flitted across 
 Alice Bevanne's pale face. 
 
 " Why do you ask that ?" she said quietly. 
 " Do I act like an enemy ? "
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 215 
 
 He was puzzled for a minute, and colored 
 in embarrassment. 
 
 " No," he answered, and was silent. Then, 
 as they looked at each other, the girl's eyes 
 wore the look of one about to smile, but she 
 did not. It was he who smiled. " I have 
 sometimes been afraid that I annoyed you," 
 he said frankly. " It has seemed to me that 
 you avoid me, and I have been wondering 
 what I could do to make myself not entirely 
 obnoxious. To me it seems best to let 
 old grudges die, and I should like to be 
 friends." 
 
 She did not change color, and yet so 
 transparent here was the veil of flesh, that 
 her swift change of mood seemed to leave 
 a physical record in her face. 
 
 "I have not thought of you as an en- 
 emy, Mr. Warren," she said, holding out her 
 hand. 
 
 He took it gladly. 
 
 " It is perhaps an absurd fancy of mine ; 
 possibly it is a guilty conscience, or an an-
 
 216 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 cestral guilty conscience, but I had thought 
 that you rather withdrew from any matter 
 in hand, golf or tennis, or whatever it might 
 be, if I was one of the players." 
 
 She smiled for the first time now. 
 
 " I think that you must forget your ear- 
 liest acquaintance with me. Was I not al- 
 ways the little sister who watched, but did 
 not play the game ? "
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 217 
 
 XV 
 
 JL AUL wondered at a certain negligence in 
 Uncle Peter's dress in these days, for the old 
 man was something of a dandy, and vain of 
 his irreproachable clothes. Now day after 
 day his collar was limp, his coat was dusty, 
 and there were wrinkles in his trousers, 
 while his gay and egotistic pessimism was 
 tarnished by persistent sadness. He talked 
 little, but, by garden path or piazza corner, 
 brooded with a frown upon his brow, for- 
 getful of the paper novel protruding from 
 his pocket, forgetful, almost, of the cigar 
 between his teeth. A fixed idea was on his 
 mind, and to that fixed idea everything in 
 nature and in memory contributed : he had 
 been cheated of his inheritance ; half-forgot- 
 ten words out of the past and the half- 
 remembered expressions of certain faces
 
 218 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 confirmed the conviction, as did the look 
 he imagined in Paul's eyes. The injury had 
 not pressed upon him so heavily in John 
 Warren's day : he had stood in awe of John, 
 and even to his butterfly brain it had seemed 
 fitting that so strong a hand should hold the 
 helm ; but now it was different. Paul, who 
 had been a baby before his eyes ; Paul, who 
 was in knickerbockers but yesterday, had 
 stepped between him and his own. The 
 feeling that the management of the Warren 
 affairs had been given to one much younger 
 anfl therefore more incompetent than him- 
 self was galling to the old man ; and the 
 sense of injury that he had felt on hearing 
 his own father's will read, had felt, but 
 had forgotten in his busy thoughts and his 
 busy reading of Ouida and the Duchess, 
 came back with more than its pristine force. 
 Had not great-great-grandfather Warren 
 played fast and loose with other people's 
 money as well as with his own ? Was it not 
 probable, although no cases were recorded,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 219 
 
 of course they would not be recorded, 
 that there had been in the family history 
 instances of questionable honesty ? Surely, 
 if his pages of fiction spoke truth, there 
 was nothing so prone to trip the foot of 
 erring man as the golden calf. He had been 
 wronged, and through Paul's accession the 
 situation had become unendurable ; should 
 he not devote his best energies to investiga- 
 tion and to undoing the harm done ? 
 
 As he wondered where to begin, remem- 
 bering from his favorite stories moments 
 where the veriest trifles had become, under 
 the working of an acute mind, irresistible 
 proofs of guilt, it occurred to him that old 
 Andrew Lane might be of use. Andrew had 
 served his father, and doubtless skillful 
 questioning would elicit valuable information 
 without betraying the purpose ; people of 
 that class were usually dull of intellect, and 
 slow in drawing inferences. He would begin 
 with Andrew. 
 
 There was a touch of hauteur in Uncle
 
 MO THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 Peter's manner as he walked out into the 
 new orchard, where the old gardener was 
 pruning branches and twigs from young 
 pear trees. Andrew Lane was rarely respect- 
 ful, he confessed to himself, and he resolved 
 that his own manner should strike just the 
 balance between sternness and affability 
 that would elicit the best results. Affability 
 should come first. 
 
 " Good-morning, good-morning, Andrew," 
 said Uncle Peter genially, as he drew near 
 the spot where blue overalls and -a torn felt 
 hat betrayed the old man's presence. The 
 workman nodded, mumbling an inarticulate 
 reply, but he went on cutting. 
 
 "Andrew," said Uncle Peter, standing 
 with his legs slightly apart in his conception 
 of a manly attitude, " do you remember my 
 father well ? " 
 
 The question brought the pruning-shears 
 to an abrupt standstill, and two shrewd old 
 blue eyes twinkled humorously from under 
 grizzled eyebrows. 

 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 221 
 
 " Yes," he nodded. 
 
 " He was a fine man, Andrew," remarked 
 the visitor, with a sigh. 
 
 "To be sure," said the old gardener. 
 " Glad you think so." 
 
 " Did n't you think so ? " queried Uncle 
 Peter. 
 
 Andrew pushed back his battered hat and 
 went to work again, making little ineffectual 
 periods to the conversation with every snip 
 of his shears. 
 
 " He was honest," said Andrew. " Any 
 man 's a fine man that 's honest, I s'pose." 
 
 " But was n't he especially kind to you ? " 
 demanded Uncle Peter, an edge of the stern- 
 ness that he had planned as a last resort 
 getting into his voice as he saw the old ser- 
 vant shaking with silent laughter. 
 
 " Whiles he wuz, and whiles he wuz n't," 
 was the answer. 
 
 A reproof quivered on Uncle Peter's lips, 
 but he repressed it. Diplomatists, he re- 
 flected, should use the most delicate tact.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " I wonder if you recall anything special 
 about him the winter he died ; I was in 
 Florida, you know. Did anything strike you 
 as unusual at that time ? " 
 
 The old man's eyes pierced through the 
 wrinkled face with penetration that Mr. 
 Peter Warren failed to see. 
 
 " He wuz about as usual, I guess." 
 
 " Quite right in his mind, eh ? " 
 
 " About as usual," answered the gardener, 
 grinning. 
 
 The baffled questioner made a sudden 
 move that he had not planned ; at least he 
 could make this exasperating old man take 
 a serious view of the situation. 
 
 " I will confide in you, Andrew," he said 
 kindly, " that doubts have been for many 
 years stirring in my mind regarding my 
 father's sanity when he made his will. It 
 was very unusual, you know, very extraor- 
 dinary. I thought that if you had anything 
 of importance to tell me, I could make it 
 worth your while."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 223 
 
 " I guess that air will wnz all right," said 
 Andrew Lane, going back to his work, and 
 Uncle Peter strode away in helpless rage. 
 
 It was partly his rebuff at the hands of a 
 menial, partly a memory of the fresh inter- 
 est in Alec Bevanne's eyes when the money 
 trouble had been suggested to him, that 
 drove Uncle Peter to seek the companion- 
 ship and the sympathy of his young neigh- 
 bor frequently during the days that followed. 
 Walking by shore or lane, they often met 
 by accident, and there was a gate near the 
 Bevanne homestead by which the old man 
 sometimes went to stand at sunset. Seeing 
 him there, the young professor would stroll 
 out good-naturedly to meet him, and a long 
 conversation would ensue. It was wonder- 
 ful, Uncle Peter reflected, how many tastes 
 they had in common, despite the disparity 
 of their ages ; he had not supposed that 
 there were any longer in a degenerate world 
 young men as nice as this. The same books, 
 especially books of poetry, seemed to appeal
 
 224 
 
 to them both ; they shared the same senti- 
 ments concerning nature, and were as one 
 man when they talked of Frances Wilmot. 
 Uncle Peter needed no one to tell him how 
 thirstily Alec Bevanne drank in all he had 
 to say of her, and he took delight in repeat- 
 ing what she had said on this day or that 
 while visiting Mrs. Warren, in telling what 
 she had worn. Many of his descriptions were 
 of a high order of antiquated literary merit. 
 When gloomier themes presented them- 
 selves, he found in this young man almost 
 the same interested courtesy that he found 
 when speaking of woman, wine, and verse ; 
 and the words of encouragement were balm 
 to a wounded heart. This charming neigh- 
 bor could hardly be more interested in the 
 situation if it were one involving his own 
 interests, Uncle Peter thought warmly. His 
 appreciation was delicate, his sympathy 
 kindly as it was rare. 
 
 Half thoughtlessly the young man drew 
 the old one out. It was great fun to hear
 
 him talk : nothing so interesting, so many- 
 sided, and, withal, so futile, in the way of 
 personality had presented itself for a long 
 time. Uncle Peter's very vocabulary had a 
 charm about it, with its quaint polysyllables ; 
 and his airy fancies and theories, his way of 
 covering any plain situation or object with 
 a dusky mist of his own morbid thought, pre- 
 sented constantly varying entertainment to 
 the student of books and of human nature. 
 The fixed idea, as it grounded itself more 
 and more strongly in Uncle Peter's mind, be- 
 gan to suggest to Alec Bevanne something 
 more than mere entertainment. Might there 
 not be truth in the suspicion of wrong-doing 
 somewhere ? The situation was a strange 
 one, and the old man had undoubtedly been 
 deprived of that which, in the usual course 
 of things, would have been his. An unformu- 
 lated thought that anything meaning misfor- 
 tune to Paul Warren, who could almost daily 
 see this one woman of all the world and hear 
 her speak, would not come amiss, lurked
 
 S26 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 low down in Alec- Bevanne's mind. He 
 encouraged Uncle Peter, clapped him in 
 friendly wise upon the back, and told him to 
 go on and claim his own. It was but justice 
 that he wanted ; no one could blame him for 
 demanding that. At least he should consult a 
 lawyer, the very best that could be found. As 
 the old man drank hope and inspiration from 
 the cheery words and smile, his manner grew 
 more and more distant when he spoke to his 
 nephew. If not actually a villain, Paul was 
 apparently the son of a villain, and no one 
 knew better than Uncle Peter the compelling 
 nature of hereditary impulse. 
 
 As the days went on, the old man grew 
 more and more restless, smoked less, and 
 lingered longer at the sideboard ; and the 
 name of great-great-grandfather Warren was 
 oftener than ever on his lips. Then came a 
 morning when he did not appear at break- 
 fast, and news was brought that he could not 
 be found. His bed had not been used ; vari- 
 ous toilet articles and pieces of clothing had
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 227 
 
 been taken from the room ; and in the deep 
 dust of the road prints of foolish pointed- 
 toed shoes led away in the direction of the 
 railway station. Had anything of the kind 
 ever occurred before, Paul asked his mother 
 as he ate a hasty breakfast, conscious that 
 steps must be taken at once to bring the fu- 
 gitive back, but sorely at a loss to know the 
 wisest way of beginning. Once or twice, Mrs. 
 Warren answered, he had disappeared with- 
 out warning, but it had always made Paul's 
 father uneasy. Now Uncle Peter was too old 
 to be trusted alone ; he had probably gone 
 to Boston, and Paul must follow as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 The day after the disappearance, while 
 Paul Warren was searching hotel registers 
 and watching on street corners, Alec Bevanne 
 drove gayly up to the Warren homestead 
 with Uncle Peter beside him in the light car- 
 riage. He came in to make a call on Mrs. 
 Warren, while Uncle Peter removed the dust 
 of travel upstairs.
 
 828 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " We happened to meet," he said confi- 
 dentially to his hostess. " I was not sure that 
 Mr. Warren could make his way among the 
 crowds, so I kept an eye on him, and he fell 
 in gladly with my suggestion that we should 
 come home together." 
 
 " That young Mr. Bevanne is a person of 
 most delicate courtesy, Paul," said Mrs. War- 
 ren, when her son, hot, tired, and vexed, re- 
 turned in answer to her telegram. " He could 
 not have been more considerate." 
 
 Paul added his thanks to his mother's when 
 an opportunity came, wondering, meanwhile, 
 how he could be base enough to suspect that 
 the obliging young neighbor had had some- 
 thing to do with the departure as well as 
 with the return, yet irresistibly drawn to 
 that conclusion by the old man's dark hints. 
 Uncle Peter had come back from his escapade 
 with an exasperating air of having accom- 
 plished something, and he went about cheer- 
 fully humming bits of song : as he himself 
 expressed it, the ancestor poetess was upper-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 229 
 
 most in him now. He vouchsafed no real ex- 
 planation of his absence, merely remarking 
 that he had had business in the city, and he 
 dwelt much upon the attractions of his friend, 
 Alec Bevanne, who had been of real service 
 to him. 
 
 It was half in good nature, half in malice, 
 that this young man spread abroad his know- 
 ledge of Uncle Peter and of the revelations 
 that had come through him. Alec liked to 
 share good things with appreciative listeners, 
 and his mother and Alice were entertained, 
 sometimes against their will, with bits of the 
 Warren family history. Even the loungers 
 about the post-office at Wahonet heard bits 
 of gossip that had a relish for their ears, for 
 the Warrens were no great favorites with the 
 idlers at open doors. 
 
 "Mas'r Paul," said Aunt Belinda one 
 morning as she brought in a plate of hot 
 waffles to set before her young master, 
 " what 's all this I yer Mas'r Alec Bevanne 
 tellin' 'bout you all ? "
 
 Paul looked up in wonder. 
 
 " Dat low nigger dat works down to the 
 Sunny Beach House tole me suffin' 'bout it," 
 said Aunt Belinda, with a sniff. " Says dey 's 
 all so'ts of things happen in de fam'ly dat you 
 all is 'shamed of. Now I say, Mas'r Paul, dat 
 dey all wrong. Like 'nough yo' paw and yo' 
 grandpaw done lots ob things to be 'shamed 
 ob, but dey wan 't 'shamed of dem! Dat's 
 what I tole dat low nigger."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 231 
 
 XVI 
 
 XT was a bit of lovely pasture land beside 
 the sea. Low headlands jutted out into the 
 water, with soft hollows lying between, and 
 the bare look of lichen-covered gray stone 
 and shorn green grass where the herd was 
 grazing brought to Frances Wilmot a sudden 
 sense of the unseen beauty of the shores of 
 Greece. So must the dun-colored cows have 
 stood out against a sky of cloudless blue in 
 the old great days, and even as now must 
 the salt, sweet breeze blowing across the 
 hollow have brought courage to hearts long 
 turned to dust. The still blue water wore the 
 changeless look that it bears on quiet days 
 to those who cannot see the ceaseless stir 
 along the beach, and swift passing beauty 
 seemed fixed in an immortal moment. There 
 was no sound save that of the soft step of
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 hoofs upon the turf, and of the cropping 
 of grass. Noiselessly one little fishing craft, 
 with sunlight on its white sail, and its hull 
 dark in shadow, crept down along the shore. 
 The girl closed her eyes to feel the full en- 
 chantment of loneliness, of silence, and of 
 the sea, opening them to find all still the 
 same. 
 
 A sharp little bark broke the stillness : 
 looking up, she saw Robin Hood, pausing 
 near her with lifted head and the old puzzled 
 look in his eyes. What was to be done with 
 this intruder who was so near his cows ? he 
 seemed to ask. She did not call him to her 
 where she sat on a great gray rock in a hol- 
 low, with clustered low green fern at her 
 feet, but watched as, with a low growl, he 
 subsided, seating himself not far away with 
 his back toward her and gazing into distance 
 or into the past. If some dim thought was 
 in his mind that he must protect this friend 
 of the house he served, he was apparently 
 resolved to ignore the relationship, lest she 

 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 presume. As they waited, the light across 
 the sea and in the hollows grew more golden, 
 and the shadow of hillock and fern-bordered 
 rock crept farther across the grass. The sun- 
 set light falling on the one white sail, and 
 turning water and shore to deeper and ten- 
 derer color, made her realize that she had 
 spent the livelong afternoon sitting with the 
 sunshine on her face, bookless, and with no 
 occupation save the opening and the shutting 
 of her eyes. 
 
 When Robin Hood's master strolled over 
 the hill she felt no surprise ; she knew that 
 this was Warren pasture land, and that these 
 great-eyed Jersey cattle belonged to the 
 Warren herd. Moreover, at odd moments 
 in the shifting of her dreams, she had been 
 thinking of this man. That the result of her 
 analysis of his character was not entirely 
 satisfactory was seen in the seriousness that 
 sat upon her brow. At first he did not see 
 her ; the quick swing of his step grew slower 
 as he reached the top of the headland and
 
 284 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 looked across the sea. What fresh sense was 
 in his mind of the encompassing beauty and 
 worth of the world she did not dream, but 
 he paused, glad of the sudden feeling that 
 the old charmed moments which had come 
 to him at rare intervals through the past 
 years of his life were hurrying fast upon 
 one another now. A sense as of joy coming 
 in like the tide across thirsty sand was in 
 his soul, and the ripple and swish of the 
 soft waves on the beach below seemed to 
 be something taking place inside him. He 
 clenched his hands for gladness at the pain 
 of being born into the world of beauty and 
 the world of love. Ah, it was good, with its 
 sting, its possibilities of hurt, its certainties 
 of knowing ! Then, across his sudden vision 
 of life glad and free as on the golden hills, 
 yet fine and conscience-guarded, floated a 
 memory of his mother's face, and with it a 
 train of faces shadowed and sad, making him 
 aware of increased sensitiveness to pain. The 
 walls of his being had grown thinner, and
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 235 
 
 every touch from outside meant the vibrat- 
 ing of the soul within to the sorrow, the 
 hurt, the joy of the world. Full of a new 
 conviction that it was good, the groping, the 
 stumbling, the finding of the way, he turned 
 and saw before him in reality, as she had 
 been in vision, the woman whose face was 
 but his old dream come true. 
 
 They easily resumed discussion as he 
 greeted her, for they had fallen into a way 
 of taking up without preamble the topic they 
 had been considering the last time when 
 interruption had come, and the remarks of 
 Monday were often only the completion of 
 sentences left unfinished on Saturday. 
 
 " They were going to read aloud at the 
 Inn," she explained presently, " and I could 
 not stand it, so I ran away." 
 
 " You rebel daughter of a rebel South ! " 
 he answered. " Such opportunities for im- 
 provement may never come again ! " 
 
 " I know it S " she admitted, and their 
 laughter rang out through the sea hollows,
 
 286 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 startling the wee sandpipers at the edge of 
 the waves. 
 
 " What makes you look so sad ? " asked 
 Frances Wilmot, for, even as their mirth 
 echoed back to them from the rocks, the sha- 
 dow of the old days had fallen across the 
 man's face, and that new sense of assured 
 good that had so lately filled him with peace 
 vanished in her presence, before his know- 
 ledge of his own unworthiness, and the cer- 
 tainty that she could never care. She was 
 quick to note the look in his deep eyes, and 
 the sudden, sensitive quiver of the lip. 
 
 " Nothing but destiny," he answered 
 lightly. 
 
 " Please don't knock the heads off those 
 ferns," said the girl, reaching to take his 
 cane from him. " And do not talk to me 
 of destiny! There isn't any such thing; 
 there is nothing but the human will ! " She 
 shook her wind-blown hair from her face, 
 looking, in her joyous energy, like the in- 
 carnation of the will of which she spoke.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 237 
 
 " You are in a heroic mood to-day." 
 
 She nodded. " The souls of the heroes 
 of Greece have been flitting past me in this 
 hollow, and they have left their courage in 
 my soul." 
 
 " There were heroic Greek women, too," 
 he said idly, thinking that, with this stern 
 beauty of rock and shorn grass about her, 
 and with the touch of severity upon her 
 brow, she might, save for her modern dress, 
 be a bit of the olden time. Surely none 
 could have had greater courage at the hands 
 of fate, and he watched her, wondering. It 
 seemed to him that within the shelter of 
 her soul she sat weaving pain and loss and 
 joy into a web of marvelous beauty and 
 strength. 
 
 " Why do you go ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " I can hardly claim a place among your 
 heroic dreams." 
 
 " Don't disappear, Ghost ! Do you know, 
 I have been thinking about you." 
 
 " Why do you call me that ? " he asked,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 with a shade of annoyance in his voice. 
 For some reason the old jest was beginning 
 to jar. 
 
 " Because you are," said Frances Wilmot 
 firmly, audacious courage dancing in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " May I ask once for all what you mean ? " 
 
 He sat down on a granite rock near by 
 and looked at her. 
 
 " I do not know that I can tell you now ; 
 you look like a piece of your New England 
 granite." 
 
 "Go on ! " he commanded, and she obeyed. 
 
 "Because you have dropped out of your 
 place in the marching ranks ; you don't 
 belong ! You stand aside and let it all go 
 on without you ; I mean the political life 
 of the country, and all the actual fighting 
 with common things. You are the ghost of 
 old New England, and you go off into the 
 corner and associate with yourself because 
 you do not like the kind of people you 
 are thrown with if you try to keep your
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 239 
 
 hold on the actual. Ghosts never get their 
 fingers soiled dealing with practical affairs: 
 they haven't any fingers! They lead an 
 untroubled life apart among the shades." 
 
 " Do not stop ! " said Paul serenely. " Your 
 eloquence makes me think that you have 
 thought the matter out rather thoroughly." 
 
 Meanwhile, in the heart of the man, sang 
 Love, in its undreamed strength : 
 
 "/ can do all things : act, endure, achieve. 1 ' 
 
 " Who has your father's seat in the legis- 
 lature ? " she demanded, her cheeks flaming 
 with sudden red. 
 
 " An Irishman from County Down," an- 
 swered the young man, " a very interesting 
 personage, who, from the possession of a 
 cow, and two shock-headed little barefooted 
 girls, has risen in an incredibly short space 
 of time to be owner of a feudal castle on the 
 rocks, and two elegant daughters in a finish- 
 ing school. You would not check the march 
 of progress in our country, would you, or 
 blame me if my intellectual powers are not
 
 240 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 so much to the taste of my countrymen as 
 are those of the gentleman from County 
 Down?" 
 
 " You are only making fun/' said the girl, 
 <( and I am in deadly earnest." 
 
 " I had not credited you with such fiery 
 patriotism," he remarked. " Your gift had 
 seemed rather poetic than practical." 
 
 " But it seems to me that every human 
 being, man or woman, should have a sense 
 of duty about matters of every day." 
 
 " I recall some sentiments of the kind 
 myself, I think, from the copybook." 
 
 " Perhaps it is only to the very great that 
 the platitudes of life are not platitudes," she 
 flashed back, and he forgot his rising indig- 
 nation in pleasure at the quickness of her 
 retort. Again their laughter echoed between 
 the hills, and her exhortation took a merrier 
 tone. 
 
 " Oh, I 've watched you, and other civil- 
 ized men who are like you. The tide of life 
 has left you stranded high and dry on your
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 241 
 
 ideals ; it is an ideal that has n't any hold 
 on the real. You stay ghosts because you 
 are too scrupulous to live, and you associate 
 in dim corners with the spirits of Winthrop 
 and Endicott, Sumner and Phillips, ignor- 
 ing the common people who need you. It 
 is the very depth and strength of your na- 
 ture which is keeping you from being of 
 use." 
 
 " You must remember," he said lightly, 
 " that the making of the Great Refusal has 
 grown to be> a family habit." 
 
 "But that is past," sang Love silently, 
 "past and forgotten forever." 
 
 " It does n't do any good to talk to you ! " 
 said the girl, smiling. " I pierce you through 
 with winged words and you part like a fog, 
 meeting on the other side. There is n't any 
 weapon that can wound a mist ! " 
 
 " Would you mind suggesting some of the 
 details of your plan for me ? " 
 
 "I haven't made any plan," she con- 
 fessed. " You certainly ought not to give
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 up writing, but I think you need a grip on 
 actual life and difficulties. I should like to 
 see you wrest your father's place from the 
 Irishman from County Down ; I should like 
 to hear your name associated with some 
 great thing to be done, and to see you fight- 
 ing, fighting, fighting, like Achilles." 
 
 " I am quite ready," he said, smiling, 
 " even to be dragged by the hair round the 
 walls of Washington, but there are practi- 
 cal difficulties in the way, of which, appar- 
 ently, you are not aware. I confess that 
 I have scruples, for instance about buying 
 votes, which are not shared by the gentle- 
 man from County Down." 
 
 Frances Wilmot looked at him with a 
 swiftly changing face. 
 
 " I shall say nothing more," she declared. 
 " I was trying to make you angry, and you 
 sit there and look at me as a St. Bernard 
 dog looks at a fox terrier puppy that is 
 playing with his paws ! " 
 
 As he looked at her his face was a mask
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 243 
 
 hiding the tumult of his soul. With her 
 shyness and her daring, her lofty sureness 
 of the goal and her airy ignoring of the 
 path by which to reach it, was she not a 
 very woman ? His leader one minute, she 
 lingered the next for his guiding hand, and 
 he watched her flushed face and dimmed 
 dark eyes, pondering on the difference be- 
 tween his old dull pain of brooding thought 
 and this new joyous pain of being alive. 
 
 " Grant deeper hurt" pleaded Love in his 
 inmost heart, "and keener sting, for in it 
 comes the very life of life." 
 
 A long call sounded from the brow of 
 the hill ; it was the voice of Andrew Lane, 
 who had come to bring home the cows. At 
 his yodel they lifted their heads, one after 
 another, gazed meekly at him, then went 
 back to the soft, sweet grass, grazing as if 
 they had heard nothing. The cry had roused 
 Robin Hood, and he made one brave dash 
 after the herd, with all his old spirit come 
 back to him for a moment.
 
 244 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " After 'em, Robin ! Bring 'em up ! Fetch 
 'em in ! " cried Andrew, who stood now at 
 the top of the hill, silhouetted in blue over- 
 alls and yellow straw hat against the flush- 
 ing sunset sky. 
 
 Robin started to round in the herd in his 
 old, skillful, collie way, then stopped, wag- 
 ging his tail uncertainly, as if in doubt of 
 his exact duty. Andrew gave again a sharp 
 word of command, and the old dog sprang 
 forward with a joyous bark to the very cen- 
 tre of the herd, scattering the cattle this 
 way and that, and then stood quivering, un- 
 sure of his own purpose. One dun-colored 
 cow lowered her horns, and a yearling heifer 
 kicked out gayly at him, but he did not 
 flinch, only waited with wistful eyes and 
 pleading tail for a word of command that 
 he could believe. 
 
 The two who watched from the rocks in 
 the hollow glanced at each other with one of 
 those looks of complete understanding that 
 lie somewhere below speech.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " My difficulty is plainly like Robin's," said 
 Paul Warren, with the old, ironic smile, " a 
 paralyzing consciousness of undiscoverable 
 duty. He is waiting for the right voice, my 
 father's, and it never comes." 
 
 Here the dog made another sudden dash, 
 barking at the heads of the bewildered ani- 
 mals, and, in confusion, they stampeded, run- 
 ning this way and that over gray rock and 
 tangled blackberry vines, and ferns that gave 
 out a pungent odor as they were broken and 
 trodden under foot. 
 
 " No, it is I who am like Robin," said the 
 girl, a sad mischievousness coming into her 
 eyes. " That is just the way I dash at things, 
 woman-like, without knowing anything 
 about them. I regret, Mr. Warren, that I 
 have been trying to teach you out of the 
 depth of my ignorance, and I freely confess 
 that I have been pardon me barking at 
 your head ! " 
 
 So she turned and left him, and he watched 
 her as she climbed the rocky headland, stood
 
 246 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 outlined a minute against the gold flush of 
 the sky and the answering flush of the sea, 
 then wandered the way of the moorland road 
 that curled, grass-grown and beautiful, along 
 the heights. Robin Hood came back and 
 stood near his master, trying with dumb, 
 eloquent eyes to explain, and permitting a 
 single caress. 
 
 " You and I are rather badly off, old fel- 
 low," said Paul Warren. " You have lost your 
 guiding voice forever, and I have found mine 
 only to realize that I may not have it." 
 
 Musing, he paced the high, tangled cliff 
 road that the girl had followed. She was a 
 thing of fire and flame, with beauty of face 
 and of soul flashing out opalwise through 
 constant change. He might see it, as he saw 
 the glory of sunset, but he could not keep 
 it ; and would not the inevitable swift-com- 
 ing gray be all the more dreary because of 
 the vanished gold? But, as he swung on 
 his homeward way in the cool air, the en- 
 compassing rhythm of the sea got into his
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 247 
 
 long stride, and across the discords of his life 
 he seemed to hear, as he would hear forever 
 after she was gone, the melody of hers, where 
 some sweet spirit played, touching all the 
 strings to music.
 
 248 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 XVII 
 
 J_T was the woman who began it. Down the 
 garden paths and over the narrow space of 
 rock and of sand that separated the flowers 
 from the sea, she fled precipitately with wind- 
 blown hair and skirts in which the breeze 
 fluttered in joy of the chase. On the tiny 
 beach within the cove she waited expectantly 
 by the dory which was pulled up on the sand, 
 and she looked out wistfully to the Sea Gull, 
 which was rocking gently up and down upon 
 the waves. The man who followed her tacitly 
 did her bidding, though not a word was 
 spoken as the dory was launched and rowed 
 out over the water to the little sailing ves- 
 sel. With white sail set they glided noise- 
 lessly out to the wide sea, the woman at the 
 helm, the man whistling as he ran up the 
 
 jib.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 249 
 
 " You are running away," said Frances 
 Wilmot suddenly, as the spray from a wave 
 met aslant glistened on forehead and cheek. 
 
 " I am glad," rejoined Paul Warren gently, 
 " to place my one talent at your service." 
 
 " Your talent for sailing a boat ? I have 
 often admired it." 
 
 " The one talent which you attribute to 
 me, that for running away." 
 
 "Do you think it really matters if we 
 go ? " asked the woman, changing the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 " This is the game of ' follow my leader ; ' 
 I am doing your bidding," answered Paul, 
 shaking out the reef as he spread the last 
 inch of sail in the dash for the open sea. 
 
 " I did not know the visitors," mused 
 Frances Wilmot. 
 
 " And yet you knew enough to run 
 away ! " 
 
 " I did not stop to think," she said peni- 
 tently. 
 
 " That, I believe, is your ideal course of
 
 250 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 action, and the one that you constantly re- 
 commend to me ! " 
 
 " Let 's go back," pleaded the girl, half 
 letting go the tiller, so that the vessel luffed 
 and was struck by an oncoming wave. 
 
 " Look out ! " called the captain. " The 
 man at the helm must be sure of his own 
 mind, and must abide the consequences 
 of his actions ! No, mother will have made 
 my excuses by this time, and it will only 
 complicate matters if we go back. Besides, 
 I promised to do an errand for her at Tern 
 Island this afternoon, and we must head for 
 that place now. Port your helm ! " 
 
 They sailed on in silence, over the dan- 
 cing water, with the sweet, fresh wind in 
 their faces, and the girl crooned her song of 
 the tide, while new measures got into it as 
 the green, surging waves mounted to meet 
 them, parting gently with loveliest color and 
 sound when the Sea Gull cut them through. 
 This beauty, escaping through myriad full- 
 ness, how could she grasp, how endure it ?
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 251 
 
 Unconsciously it had become to her the 
 clearest symbol of that quick changefulness 
 which lends life significance, infinite per- 
 manence running through infinite change. 
 
 "'The heart of the great tides/" Paul 
 Warren repeated to himself, watching the 
 rhythmic color in her cheek and listening to 
 her song ; and, wind and wave lending their 
 own courage to his soul, as he took charge 
 of tiller and sheet, he laughed inwardly, as 
 he had often done of late, at his passing 
 mood of causeless melancholy, for the old 
 ghosts waged a losing fight against the 
 strength of the sea. Why should he stand 
 apart or dream that his lot should be less 
 than that of other men? Nay, when the 
 right moment came, he would venture all 
 and try his fate, abiding gain or loss ; and the 
 man's eyes smiled gravely as Love touched 
 the will and quickened it to faith and ac- 
 tion. 
 
 Frances Wilmot, singing to herself and 
 swaying slightly to and fro with the motion
 
 252 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 of the boat, failed to read the expression 
 of the face whose reserve was a protecting 
 mask. The motion of the man's arms, his 
 skill, his masterful way of meeting difficulty, 
 gave her to-day, as always, a thrill of de- 
 light. Look and action showed him to her 
 triumphantly as a leader of men, if the 
 opportunity for leadership could but come, 
 if some great force would but push him into 
 the heart of life. 
 
 Then the face of Alice Bevanne floated 
 before her, and in fancy she saw it as she 
 had often seen it with her eyes, outlined 
 against the blue of sky and of sea, with its 
 protecting cloud of palest gold hair, full 
 of delicate strength and austerity and power 
 to endure. Frances Wilmot's breath came 
 quickly with a thought that had often struck 
 her before : was not the hidden fire of this 
 girl's nature all that was needed to bring 
 the touch of flame to the man's, who was so 
 near akin to her in soul ? Her shyness and 
 her unwillingness to speak of him had long
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 253 
 
 ago betrayed to Frances something that she 
 was ashamed to know : Alice loved Paul 
 Warren, loved him to the depths of her 
 heart, and had betrayed herself in this, that 
 her look of renunciation was never quite so 
 beautiful or so strong as when her eyes 
 rested on the face of this man. 
 
 If this might be, Frances prayed wind 
 and wave, it would mean to Paul Warren 
 the sting of love that is salvation ; and to 
 Alice, happiness. The throb of the girl's 
 heart as she thought of this was half the 
 hope of joy for her friend, half something 
 else. As for herself, there would be left 
 wide skies and the world of beauty, the gold 
 of sunrise over the free sea and the sweep 
 of the tides. 
 
 " I wish that we could have brought Miss 
 Bevanne; she is a great sailor," said Paul 
 suddenly, and the girl started as if he had 
 divined her thought. 
 
 " I wish we had," she answered, cunningly 
 adding : " I admire her more and more. It
 
 254 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 has been worth my pilgrimage to the North 
 to find a woman like that." 
 
 " She is certainly a remarkable girl," as- 
 sented Paul cordially. 
 
 Watching him through keen, half-closed 
 eyes, Frances Wilmot sighed ; the power of 
 these New Englanders in concealing desir- 
 able information was indeed wonderful ! In 
 silence they sailed on for half an hour more, 
 gradually nearing a little island whose gray 
 rocks and stunted pines rose out of the sea 
 with an expression of primeval silence and 
 loneliness. Running into a little cove on a 
 sheltered side of the island, they landed at a 
 tiny broken wharf, and Paul Warren turned 
 toward a gray, weatherbeaten cottage near 
 at hand. 
 
 " Will you come with me ? " he asked. 
 
 "No," said the girl, "I will climb the 
 rocks." 
 
 Above, the ragged pine trees cut the blue ; 
 beside the path dull green juniper lay warm 
 and fragrant in the sun, and all was silence
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 255 
 
 save for the cry of the white-winged gulls 
 circling overhead. Slowly she climbed over 
 lichen-grown rock and pebble, stepping noise- 
 lessly, and at the summit started back, almost 
 losing her balance, for there, lying flat on the 
 short grass, was Alec Bevanne, his arms flung 
 above his head, his eyes closed as if in sleep. 
 She tiptoed softly away over moss and lichen, 
 wondering, from the troubled look upon his 
 face, if anything were wrong ; but the break- 
 ing of a dried hemlock twig under her feet 
 betrayed her presence, and he opened his 
 eyes, was dazed for a moment as if unable 
 to distinguish between the sleeping and the 
 waking dream, then sprang to his feet, hastily 
 brushing bits of moss and twig from coat and 
 hair. 
 
 " It is odd that we should meet here," he 
 said, with a poor attempt at his usual gay 
 smile. 
 
 " I am helping Mr. Warren do an errand 
 for his mother," she said quietly, noticing 
 in her companion an agitation that showed
 
 256 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 itself in nervous action of hand and of foot. 
 At his invitation she seated herself on a great 
 rock, and together they watched the green 
 waves below rushing home to their island 
 caves, rippling, receding, with white foam 
 at the edge. Over the young man's face 
 flushed sudden color that went as quickly, 
 leaving pallor behind ; the woman saw too 
 late. 
 
 " I cannot help it/' the words came burst- 
 ing forth as if it were beyond his power to 
 stay them ; " I must speak, for I was think- 
 ing of you, I think of nothing but you, 
 and then I opened my eyes, and you stood 
 before me as if you had come in answer to 
 my call." 
 
 She raised a warning hand, and, as she did 
 so, noticed that his bloodshot eyes suggested 
 sleepless nights. 
 
 " Don't ! " she begged softly. 
 
 " I must ! " he cried. " I love you ; I know 
 that there can be but little hope for me, but 
 I love you. You must have seen it, and have
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 257 
 
 known, for I have betrayed it a thousand 
 ways." 
 
 " I did not know," she said, her heart full 
 of pity for one whose manhood seemed 
 shaken by the force of a passion that raged 
 within. 
 
 " I know that I may seem an insignificant 
 person in your eyes," he went on hotly, 
 " but I will work, I will distinguish my- 
 self, I can, if you will only help me, and 
 then"- 
 
 She shook her head, and said only the same 
 word, " Don't." 
 
 A little sandpiper ran near them on nimble 
 feet, watching with bright, eager eyes, and 
 the measure of their silence was the measure 
 of her fearlessness as she crept toward them. 
 Then the sandpiper ran fluttering away, and 
 the sea gulls paused for an instant on out- 
 stretched wings as a storm of words came 
 from the mouth of the man on the cliff. The 
 two had risen to their feet and stood startled, 
 defiant, as the woman's answer came :
 
 258 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Stop ! What right have you to speak 
 that way ? " 
 
 Hoarse as the call of the gulls, and with 
 their note of homelessness, the man's cry 
 rang back : - 
 
 " I tell you I cannot live without you ! I 
 cannot, I cannot! It is the first time I have 
 ever cared, and if there is no hope, I will 
 throw myself from the cliff into the water ! " 
 
 Was it the gulls or the waves or the 
 woman's voice that murmured, " Coward " ? 
 Shame came into the young man's face, and 
 quiet to his voice. 
 
 "No, do not go away," he begged. "I 
 will do nothing, and I much regret that I 
 have frightened you." 
 
 When Paul Warren joined them, startled 
 by the far echo of Bevanne's voice, he found 
 the two chattering about matters of no con- 
 sequence, but the strained look in his young 
 neighbor's face did not escape Paul Warren, 
 nor did the aimless movements of his ner- 
 vous hands. Paul glanced anxiously toward
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 259 
 
 Frances, divining the agitation of mood, but 
 the girl had risen and was standing with her 
 back to him, studying a sail on the horizon. 
 With the elaborate politeness which charac- 
 terized all his dealings with his neighbor, 
 he entered into a discussion regarding the 
 management of small craft, but his concealed 
 indignation waxed hotter and more hot as 
 he realized that some great shock had come 
 to Frances Wilmot, who still stood shading 
 her eyes with her hand and gazing out to 
 sea. 
 
 Half an hour later, as the Sea Gull cut 
 through the waves toward sunset and toward 
 home, Paul Warren kept a watch on the 
 white sail ahead that dipped and rose lightly 
 again where Alec Bevanne's knockabout, the 
 Rocket, danced homeward. 
 
 " That is good speed," he remarked, " but 
 Bevanne's a reckless sailor. He crowds her 
 as if he did not care whether he goes under 
 or not." 
 
 Frances looked at Paul with a sigh of deep
 
 260 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 relief. It was good to rest, after that out- 
 burst upon the island, in the strength and 
 the impersonality of this man; and good to 
 know, with the memory of that emotional 
 fury in her mind, of the reserve power and 
 self-control of which manhood was capable, 
 - though of course Paul did not care like 
 that, would never care at all. She shivered 
 as the memory of Alec Bevanne's face came 
 back to her, marveling at the difference be- 
 tween the children of one house, the silent 
 strength of love in the woman, the weakness 
 of love in the man. And oh, the pity of it ! 
 How could music be made of this world, after 
 all, if even the great tides sometimes went 
 astray ? 
 
 Sunset glowed behind the pine trees in 
 the west as they neared home ; it dyed the 
 waves with a glory of color, crimson here 
 and gold beyond ; it fell on Frances Wil- 
 mot's hair and face, hiding the trouble in 
 her eyes from the man who gazed upon 
 it. The moment which had marred for
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 261 
 
 her the melody in things brought to him 
 stronger and stronger sense of the encom- 
 passing rhythm of life ; and more and more 
 this woman seemed a part of it, and a part 
 of the great sea, with its inexplicable long- 
 ing, its life, its irresistible advance.
 
 XVIII 
 
 _l_ BY it again," suggested the friendly voice 
 of Alec Bevanne. 
 
 "I did try," answered Uncle Peter de- 
 jectedly, " and the lawyer, as you know, 
 would n't listen to me ; said it was a boot- 
 less scheme." 
 
 " Go to somebody here ; there 's Marvin 
 over in the village." 
 
 The shadow deepened on the old man's 
 face. 
 
 " He knows too much about it," was the 
 answer. " Marvin was my father's lawyer 
 and John's." 
 
 " Then he 's just the man ! " cried Alec, 
 slapping Uncle Peter's shoulder. " Face 
 him and get the truth out of him." 
 
 There was a somewhat pathetic hilarity 
 in Alec Bevanne's manner, and the flicker-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 263 
 
 ing glance of his restless eye showed eager 
 search for amusement. The two were stroll- 
 ing up and down a grass-grown, neglected 
 lane back of the Bevanne house, the elder 
 man with difficulty keeping the pace of his 
 companion's long, nervous strides. The half- 
 suppressed excitement of the latter's man- 
 ner showed most clearly in the savage at- 
 tacks of his light cane on milkweed pods, 
 whose down he sent floating hither and yon 
 in the still summer air. 
 
 " Go in for your rights," pursued Alec 
 vehemently, after waiting in vain for an 
 answer. " If John Warren took your inher- 
 itance" 
 
 " Hush," whispered Uncle Peter, with a 
 sudden clutch upon his companion's arm : 
 " there 's Paul ! " 
 
 Yes, there was Paul, striding through an 
 idjacent field with Robin at his heels, a look 
 )f fine contempt upon his face. Uncle Peter 
 pondered, with a thrill of something akin 
 to fear, how much he had heard, but Alec
 
 Bevanne only smiled. This unexpected en- 
 counter made matters all the more interest- 
 ing at a moment when he was sorely in need 
 of amusement, and a little surface annoyance 
 to the son of his father's old enemy would 
 do no harm. From all that could be found 
 out concerning the long family quarrel, the 
 Bevannes were greatly in arrears in the mat- 
 ter of paying old grudges ; and already Alec 
 half divined that in his thwarted love another 
 injury had been added to the list. 
 
 Paul said no word, but walked on as if he 
 had neither seen nor heard the speakers. His 
 smiling indifference toward Alec Bevanne 
 was broken through at last, had been broken 
 for some time, he realized, in the hot indig- 
 nation that the careless words just overheard 
 had roused. In muscle and clenched fist lin- 
 gered a sense-memory of how it had felt to 
 knock Alec Bevanne down when they were 
 boys, and at this moment it seemed to him 
 as if no experience quite so satisfactory had 
 come to him since. His teeth were set closely
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 265 
 
 together in wrath, wrath at this young man 
 for his lack of chivalry toward a helpless old 
 one. Gray hairs and foolishness combined 
 should command at least pity, and Alec Be- 
 vanne was well aware that in Uncle Peter's 
 mind, where nothing was really wrong, no- 
 thing had ever been quite right. 
 
 Half an hour later the mischievous advice 
 of the young professor had taken effect, and 
 by the shore path over headland and sandy 
 beach, in the clear August weather, strode 
 Uncle Peter, an Uncle Peter no longer smil- 
 ing, chattering, debonair, but militant, a man 
 of purpose and of action, the fixed idea in his 
 mind not now a subject of brooding thought, 
 but the nerve and soul of the most eventful 
 resolve in the man's whole life. Outside help 
 had failed. Old Andrew Lane was worse than 
 useless in giving evidence that might lead to 
 legitimate disputing of wills ; Alec Bevanne, 
 with all the moral encouragement he had 
 given, was not in a position to afford prac- 
 tical assistance: to Uncle Peter it seemed
 
 266 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 that the moment had come for his inner self 
 to rise to heroic action; man nor circum- 
 stance could help him, he would help him- 
 self. 
 
 He was taking the long path by the shore 
 of Wahonet in order to have time to calm 
 himself ; solitude and the fresh sea breeze, 
 he instinctively felt, would help nerve him 
 to action. He walked with a long, slow stride, 
 his slender frame tense with the tremulous 
 energy of the man of dreams when sum- 
 moned to unaccustomed deed. He must be 
 firm, the shaking hand kept reminding the 
 bamboo cane which trembled in sympathy; 
 he must be firm. 
 
 There was cold perspiration on his brow 
 under the protecting brim of the Panama 
 hat when at last he walked into Wahonet, 
 pausing by an old-fashioned brick house 
 whose white wooden doorway bore the sign : 
 "Abel Marvin, Attorney at Law." Uncle 
 Peter's final summoning of all his resolution 
 lent new wavering motions to his legs as he
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 267 
 
 mounted the stone steps and rang the door- 
 bell. He was ushered into a room bright 
 with red ingrain carpet, silk patchwork 
 cushions, and chromos; and here he found 
 a little, bent, old man, whose snow-white 
 hair and colorless face lent added fire and 
 expression to a pair of still brilliant dark 
 eyes. 
 
 " Take a chair," said Abel Marvin, with- 
 out rising. " Business, eh ? Come to make 
 your will ? " 
 
 Uncle Peter shook his head, slowly, por- 
 tentously. 
 
 " No," he answered, and, for almost the 
 first time in his life, did not know what to 
 say next. 
 
 " Take your time," said the old lawyer, 
 after a pause. 
 
 " Mr. Marvin," said Uncle Peter, with a 
 great leap of moral courage, "you did my 
 father's business for him the better part of 
 bis life, did n't you?" 
 
 " I believe I helped transact the law busi-
 
 268 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 ness of James Francis Warren for over thirty 
 years," was the answer. 
 
 " And you drew up his will ? " 
 
 The sharp, deep-set eyes looked out quiz- 
 zically from under the shaggy white brows. 
 
 " I believe I did." 
 
 " Did it strike you at the time that there 
 was anything curious about it ?." 
 
 " I don't recall that it did," answered the 
 old man. " I presume I was more taken up 
 in those days with getting things done than 
 with thinking about their being strange." 
 
 Uncle Peter was seated now in an arm- 
 chair upholstered in stamped red velvet, and 
 he leaned his chin upon his cane, which he 
 held between his knees. Thus supported he 
 continued his attack, with a touch of pathos 
 in his voice. 
 
 ; < My father left the bulk of his property 
 to my brother John." 
 
 "James Francis Warren certainly be- 
 queathed the major part of his effects to 
 John Warren," said Abel Marvin.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 269 
 
 " Yet I was the older, and it was certainly 
 unfair." 
 
 " Some people," drawled the old lawyer, 
 ''have an aggravating way of considering 
 their own property their own. I s'pose that 's 
 the way it was in this case." 
 
 " It was unjust, and you know it," said 
 Uncle Peter, with a sudden access of fiery 
 courage ; but Abel Marvin merely shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 " There has been something strange in 
 the whole history; I realize it more and 
 more clearly as I grow older," sternly pur- 
 sued Uncle Peter, feeling that this officer of 
 the law was quailing before him. " Unless I 
 am mistaken, you are the man whom I re- 
 member as being with my father in his li- 
 brary on one of the occasions that now come 
 back to me as proofs of my suspicion. I 
 refer to the time when my brother John was 
 born." 
 
 The old lawyer started, and the eyebrows 
 hung lower over the gleaming dark eyes.
 
 270 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " If you recall the time," said Uncle Peter, 
 
 the bamboo cane bending under the sud- 
 den demands upon it for moral support, 
 
 " can you remember whether I was the 
 person alluded to when a remark was made 
 about the arrangement being bad for some 
 one ? " 
 
 " I recall the circumstance perfectly, and 
 I believe you were," answered the lawyer 
 dryly. 
 
 " My father's will was made that day ? " 
 
 "It was." 
 
 "And never changed ? " 
 
 "And never changed." 
 
 The two men eyed each other across the 
 marble-topped table for a few seconds' space. 
 
 " I feel it my duty to tell you," said Uncle 
 Peter, clearing his throat, " that I am about 
 to dispute that will." 
 
 The dark old eyes were all attention, but 
 the lawyer was silent. 
 
 "I I have resolved to make an attempt
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 271 
 
 to recover my rightful property," asserted 
 the visitor tremulously, his pale blue eyes 
 attempting to give back bravely the stare 
 of the black ones. 
 
 " You '11 be a fool if you do," snapped the 
 lawyer. 
 
 The dignity of Uncle Peter's grand man- 
 ner was the only response. He waited long 
 until his companion spoke again. 
 
 " Mr. Warren, is it your purpose to carry 
 out this ridiculous project ? " 
 
 " It is," answered Uncle Peter majesti- 
 cally. 
 
 " Then," said Abel Marvin, " if you will 
 stop a minute, I will tell you something 
 which I should have been glad to keep from 
 you, but which it seems my duty to let you 
 know." 
 
 " Tell on," glowered Uncle Peter. 
 
 " I regret that you have made it neces- 
 sary," said the old lawyer, speaking pain- 
 fully, " but I have always had a great regard 
 for the Warren family, and am sorry to see
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 annoyance coming upon it. Of course you 
 could accomplish nothing, and for your own 
 sake, Mr. Warren, I make a last appeal : give 
 up your foolish plan." 
 
 " I will not ! " cried Uncle Peter trium- 
 phantly. " I always knew that something 
 was wrong, that there was a secret some- 
 where. Now I shall find it out at last." 
 
 " There was a secret," admitted Abel Mar- 
 vin, " about you. I am especially sorry to tell 
 it to you, .for you are the one person who 
 will not be able to keep it. However, I shall 
 tell it to no one else, and if it becomes 
 known it will be through no fault of mine. 
 Mr. Peter Warren, you are no more the son 
 of James Francis Warren than I am." 
 
 " What ! " stammered Uncle Peter. 
 
 " You are no Warren : you are an adopted 
 child, taken into the family when you were 
 four months old." 
 
 The bamboo cane had lost all strength of 
 purpose and was quivering pitiably. 
 
 " It 's a lie ! " cried Uncle Peter, angrily
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 273 
 
 shaking the cane that had deserted him in 
 his hour of need. 
 
 The lawyer shook his head, and the very 
 accent of truth was in the motion. 
 
 " What motive could there have been for 
 such an absurd action ? " asked the other, 
 with a scornful laugh. 
 
 " Fear of having no heir," said Abel Mar- 
 vin. " Mr. James Francis Warren was an 
 ambitious man, and his one desire was to 
 build up a great estate and leave it to his 
 son. He had been married eight years, and 
 had no child when he adopted you ; you were 
 brought here with your parents from Ver- 
 mont one spring when the family came back 
 from the city, where you were supposed to 
 have been born. So far as I know, no human 
 being has ever suspected the secret, and Mr. 
 Warren was fairly content to hand down his 
 name to you, when John Warren suddenly 
 surprised everybody by making his appear- 
 ance in the world." 
 
 " It is a story that you are making up to
 
 274 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 frighten me out of my just purpose," blus- 
 tered Uncle Peter. "You have no proofs; 
 whose son am I, according to your fairy 
 tale?" 
 
 " You are the oldest son of Andrew Lane," 
 said the old lawyer. " Proofs enough exist ; 
 your father has them in his possession. I 
 naturally have none here, though I have a 
 clear memory of all that happened on that 
 day when Mr. Warren took me into his con- 
 fidence, the day you have alluded to, when 
 you were perhaps five years old and matters 
 had to be readjusted because of John War- 
 ren's birth." 
 
 " Andrew Lane ! " shouted Uncle Peter. 
 " I don't believe a word of it." 
 
 Abel Marvin looked calmly out of the win- 
 dow. 
 
 " There 's my son," he announced, "just 
 home. If you like, he can drive us down to 
 Andrew's, and you can see for yourself." 
 
 " Does he know ? " 
 
 " Nobody knows," repeated Abel Marvin ; 

 
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 275 
 
 "John Warren always supposed you to be 
 his brother, for James Francis wanted to 
 carry out his original intention as nearly as 
 possible." 
 
 The cool drive down the long country 
 road brought to Uncle Peter only a sickening 
 of the heart. It was a drooping figure that 
 bent over the bamboo cane on the back seat 
 of the light carriage, very different from the 
 heroic one that had walked bravely along 
 the shore an hour ago. 
 
 Old Andrew Lane was alone, sunning him- 
 self on the little front porch of the house 
 where he lived with his son and his son's 
 wife. Hollyhock and sunflower grew by the 
 prim path that led to the green door of the 
 old stone house, and the stamp of homely 
 comfort lay on threshold and window. 
 
 " What 's up ? " asked Andrew, as the two 
 old men came toward him. 
 
 " It 's all up," said the lawyer. " To pro- 
 tect the Warren family from annoyance 
 I 've been obliged to tell Mr. Peter here a
 
 276 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 tale that he does n't believe. You have the 
 documents, I believe. I should like to have 
 him see them." 
 
 With his clay pipe still in his mouth, old 
 Andrew hobbled into an inner room, re- 
 appearing presently with a padlocked tin 
 box, and with a worn family Bible. 
 
 "There you be," he said, putting the open 
 Bible before Uncle Peter, and proceeding to 
 open the box. 
 
 Uncle Peter's eyes did him bad service, 
 but he managed to read on the stained yel- 
 low page the record of the birth of a child 
 named Peter, on his very birthday, to An- 
 drew and Cynthia Lane, and without a word 
 he turned to the paper which the gardener 
 handed him. It was a certificate of adoption 
 of a four months' old child, called Peter 
 Lane, by James Francis Warren, who bound 
 himself, not only to provide for said child 
 for life, but to support the parents, who 
 had moved to Wahonet, in return for any 
 service which they might care to give, the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 277 
 
 support to cease at any moment if the 
 secret were not scrupulously kept. 
 
 " Oh ! " moaned Uncle Peter, convinced 
 at last. " It is hard ; it is too hard." 
 
 " So your ma thought," said old Andrew 
 Lane, " 'til Andy was born ; that comforted 
 her consid'able." 
 
 " Good-by, Mr. Warren," said the lawyer, 
 holding out his hand. " Keep the secret if 
 you can, and as for this afternoon's business, 
 well, perhaps you 'd better quit reading 
 so many paper-covered novels.'* 
 
 Old Andrew Lane went to put away the 
 tin box, saying as he did so, with the slight- 
 est quiver in the gruff voice : - 
 
 "I cal'late you won't want to come to 
 live with your folks, but if you should need 
 to, some time, mebbe, I guess we can find 
 room." 
 
 Uncle Peter, tottering out to the porch, 
 utterly unable to rise to the occasion, sat 
 down on an unpainted wooden bench, with 
 sunflower and holyhock swimming before
 
 278 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 his eyes, and wept piteously for great-grand- 
 mother Anne, and the ancestor-poetess, and 
 even, in a cruel, belated sense of orphan- 
 hood, for great-great-grandfather Warren 
 and all his sins.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 279 
 
 XIX 
 
 J_ HE charm of the road was that it seemed 
 to lead nowhere, only wandered incidentally 
 whither it would, now panting up a little 
 hill, now running down to rest in a hollow, 
 now hiding in the woodland under nodding 
 branch and wind-stirred leaf, now peering 
 out to get a glimpse of the sea, a whimsi- 
 cal, irresponsible, mystical road, taking its 
 own way to the unknown. The girl who 
 wandered lazily along it, in the beaten track 
 or on the small, worn footpath through the 
 grass, was keeping time in her imagination 
 with all the free feet that had ever wan- 
 dered that way. Here and there she passed 
 a small house. At one an old man was dig- 
 ging in the garden ; at another a little girl 
 was playing with her doll on the doorstep ; 
 in a bit of pasture near another a calf was
 
 280 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 frisking with joyous tail ; at the next an old 
 woman, calico-clad, was hanging clothes upon 
 a line. Frances Wilmot wanted to stop with 
 them all to do what they were doing, and 
 then go on and on. None save the calf 
 seemed to share her mood, and she pitied 
 them that they could not follow her upon 
 the open road. 
 
 After a quick run around a sharp curve 
 the irresponsible road suddenly came to a 
 crossing, and was brought face to face with 
 the problem of choosing its way. A sign- 
 post stood there, turned all askew, " 9 m. to 
 Brentford " staring out from a strip of board 
 where a finger pointed heavenward ; "4m. 
 to Valley Cove," on a strip pointing to earth ; 
 and " 6 m. to Ransom's Point," on a strip 
 that pointed straight to a mossy stone fence. 
 The road seemed to evade any choice, and 
 the three ways that led onward fled in dif- 
 ferent directions from the one by which she 
 had come; and sunlight lay on them all, 
 grass grew green at the edge, aster and
 
 goldenrod blossomed impartially by the 
 crumbling stone fences. What need to 
 choose ? She started along the road at the 
 left; each led somewhere, and the guiding 
 sea was close at hand. 
 
 The road led merrily oft' past meadowland 
 and into a green forest, and suddenly joined 
 company with a brook, hurrying as if glad 
 of new music, and as if bent on seeing 
 whether dust and clod could not keep pace 
 with running water. Guarded by rock and 
 stone, and overhung by sunlit leaves, the 
 stream glided on, falling here in little silvery 
 cascades, and gathering there into a quiet 
 pool. The air, soft with the coolness of liv- 
 ing branches on which the sun is beating, 
 was still with the murmuring quiet of the 
 woods. As the girl followed, stepping with 
 the brook, she thought only of the touch of 
 autumn in the new, sweet freshness of the 
 air on face and wrist and throat ; then, 
 emerging from the woodland, she realized 
 that her landmarks were gone, the village
 
 282 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 spire that had often guided her steps was no 
 longer in sight, and the bold outline of the 
 Emerson Inn on its headland had disap- 
 peared. What matter, while along this un- 
 known way vine and blossom lured her feet 
 to wander farther, and her hands to gather 
 spoils ? 
 
 It was the time of the glory of goldenrod : 
 tall, starry clusters nodded over the stone 
 fences; sword-shaped stalks burned with 
 their rich color along the highway ; and 
 short, sunburned heads turned the pasture 
 lands to fields of gold, dim and beautiful as 
 the dream fields of the Islands of the Blest. 
 The girl filled her arms with it ; long clusters 
 nodded over her shoulders, and a great mass 
 glowed against the white of her gown, and 
 against her sunburned cheek. So great a 
 burden was she carrying that she grew 
 weary, and, wondering where she could stop 
 to rest, she found herself by a little old de- 
 serted house, whose worn doorstep invited 
 her to pause. By the open door grew old
 
 rose bushes where in June ragged pink roses 
 still blossomed upon ragged stems ; through 
 the casements, from which the windows had 
 disappeared, curled and twined woodbine and 
 clematis. Some woman who had lived here 
 long ago had loved sweet things at her win- 
 dow, and had set flowers to bloom by the 
 paths which her feet must pass. Grass cov- 
 ered the little garden plot, and old lilac 
 bushes grew apace by the broken picket 
 fence and the posts of the vanished gate. 
 Empty and open to sun and rain were th*e 
 bare rooms where woodwork and floors were 
 mouldering. Swallows had builded upon the 
 cornices of the doors, and on the mantel in 
 the old parlor a wren had made her nest. 
 
 Life and thought have gone away 
 
 Side by side, 
 Leaving doors and windows wide, 
 
 Careless tenants they. 
 
 Sitting on the step with her head leaning 
 against the white doorpost, Frances Wilmot 
 half slept, while the warm sunshine of late
 
 284 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 afternoon shone on her face ; and she almost 
 heard, through the murmur of live things 
 from the long grass near by, the tread of the 
 vanished feet of father, mother, and child 
 that had worn the threshold thin. Close by 
 a cricket chirped ; yellow butterflies, glad of 
 the goldenrod in her lap, fluttered about her, 
 lighting on hair and eyelids of the girl who 
 sat so still ; and home-coming swallows circled 
 anxiously near and far again, troubled by 
 this motionless disturber of their domain. 
 
 Here Paul Warren found her as he was 
 sauntering home after a ten-mile walk, and 
 he stopped, frowning ; was she safe in this 
 lonely spot ? As he looked, however, he for- 
 got to frown, so fair a picture she made 
 leaning there with her long lashes dark upon 
 her cheek, in her bower of palest yellow and 
 deep Etruscan gold ; there was no doubt any 
 longer of Paul Warren's sense of the beauty 
 of color. So soft were his footsteps in the 
 rank grass outside the ruined picket fence 
 that she did not hear him, and he stood long
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 285 
 
 watching her. Presently she opened her 
 eyes and smiled. 
 
 " I wasn't asleep," she said sleepily. 
 
 " May I come in ? " he asked, from the lilac 
 bush by the gatepost. 
 
 " I don't know what place could be fitter 
 for a ghost than a ruined house," said the 
 girl merrily. " Come in and flit with the 1 
 other shades ; I 've heard them whispering 
 about me." 
 
 "It seems to me," he remarked, as he 
 came slowly up the grass-grown walk, " that 
 you rather resemble some of the angels of 
 the early Italian painters, with their shaded 
 golden wings." 
 
 She looked reproachfully at him. 
 
 " The one thing that I have liked about 
 you," she said severely, " has been that you 
 were different from other men, and did not 
 pay foolish compliments." 
 
 " I was not complimenting you ; perhaps 
 I was complimenting the angels, for there 
 is something in your face that is not in
 
 886 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 theirs," he said, looking gravely down at 
 her. She rose, shaking her head. 
 
 " You forget that they all had golden hair ; 
 only witches and lady demons had black 
 locks like mine. Do you dare go in ? " 
 
 He pushed the sagging green door farther 
 open, and they entered the old hall, with 
 footsteps muffled by the dust which lay thick 
 upon the floor. In the kitchen a tin mug 
 lay upon a broken stool; in the parlor a 
 chromo of " Hope," white-robed and staring 
 wildly, hung upon the wall, and a child's top 
 lay upon the floor. Vines were already grow- 
 ing with fresh green tendrils over the crum- 
 bling boards, and in one place, where the 
 floor was broken, a great thistle had thrust 
 its way up and had burst into purple bloom. 
 
 " Now," said Paul Warren softly, " you 
 look like the spirit of Life itself, going with 
 golden torches through the house of death." 
 
 Frances Wilmot turned and faced him 
 with light words that belied the shadowy 
 depths of her eyes.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 287 
 
 " Mr. Warren, if you are n't careful, you 
 will turn into a poet, and that would be a 
 most undeserved fate for a philosopher ! " 
 
 The man's face quivered in the moted 
 sunbeams that stole in through the open 
 windows toward the west. 
 
 " I have turned into a lover," he said 
 slowly ; " that is, perhaps, the same thing." 
 
 For an instant all that moved in the room 
 was the dust which the sunlight turned to a 
 golden cloud as it rose ; it could not hide the 
 doubt and question and wonder in the girl's 
 eyes. 
 
 " Yes, of course I mean you," said Paul 
 Warren. " Who else is there in all the 
 world ? " 
 
 The tense, white lips and tightly clenched 
 hands betrayed how great had been his pain 
 in speaking as he had spoken. 
 
 " You knew that I loved you ; you must 
 have known," he said. 
 
 " I never dreamed it," said the girl, with 
 a little gasp. "You?"
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Why not I ? " he asked sternly. " You 
 have thought of me as an abstraction ; it is 
 odd that I should be compelled to tell you 
 that I am a man ! I 'm a thing of brawn 
 and muscle and of a beating heart, which I 
 think is capable of taking hold as far down 
 as the heart can take on human joy and 
 human pain. Your jest of the ghost has 
 been a merry one, but it is over now." 
 
 The girl's head was bent in awe among 
 her flowers. 
 
 "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I should 
 not have been so saucy if I had known." 
 
 Her wit and her eloquence had deserted 
 her ; she was as the most speechless and 
 embarrassed maiden who ever stood dumb 
 in Love's presence. 
 
 " Perhaps there are different kinds of gray 
 webs to wear across the eyes," he said, 
 smiling. 
 
 "You you never betrayed it, by the 
 quiver of a muscle," she stammered. " I 
 should have known."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 289 
 
 " You know the ordinary signs very well, 
 I presume," he answered. " I never meant 
 to show it, or to let you know." 
 
 " Why ? " she asked. The dusky eyes she 
 raised to him were hard for the man to read. 
 Outside the cricket chirped loudly across the 
 silence ; a swallow, entering through the open 
 window, took fright at the two motionless 
 figures standing there, and skimmed away. 
 
 " What would you think," he asked, 
 breathing with difficulty, " of the task set 
 for a man who was in a wilderness from 
 which he could not escape, and who heard a 
 voice calling, a voice that knew the way of 
 his soul, and still had to turn and go away 
 from it ? " 
 
 The girl looked on in wonder, watching 
 through the dust-flecked sunshine, and he 
 reached both hands out toward her, then 
 drew them back. 
 
 " How can I let the shadows of my life 
 fall on your face ? " he asked passionately. 
 
 " The shadows of your life ! " she said
 
 290 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 with reproach. " There are n't any. You 
 make them up to please your Puritan an- 
 cestors." 
 
 " Then will you come ? " 
 
 She stepped lightly across the dusty floor 
 to the doorway, looking back from the 
 threshold to the man who sadly followed. 
 
 " This means that you will not help me 
 build again the ruined house of life ? " 
 
 " I am afraid," said Frances Wilmot. 
 
 " You who believe so deeply in life, and 
 whose courage has so often put me to 
 shame ? " 
 
 " Life, yes," she answered, " but Love, 
 that is too great for me, too terrible, and 
 I am afraid." 
 
 "Ah," he cried, "it is the first thing in 
 life that has made me unafraid." 
 
 " You are a man," said the girl simply. 
 " It shows the fundamental strength of you 
 from Adam's time on ; I am only a woman." 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! " he said. 
 
 " I can prattle about life, but then I faint
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 291 
 
 and fail when the supreme test comes. I 
 cannot let it come ! " and she put out her 
 hands to ward off Love. " I am content with 
 the beauty of the world, and the happiness 
 that lies behind, and the sorrow whose mean- 
 ing I have n't half spelled out." 
 
 " Child," said Paul Warren, watching the 
 hands from which the blossoms dropped in a 
 golden shower on the worn doorstep and the 
 green grass, " don't you see that you are 
 half confessing that you care ? " 
 
 " I have n't confessed it to myself," she 
 answered with brave lips. 
 
 " Sit down for a minute ; you are tired," 
 he commanded, and she did his bidding. 
 
 " You must come, Enchantress," he said, 
 from the step at her feet. " There are so many 
 doors for you to open, and none other has 
 the key. You must come to unwind for me 
 the gray webs of many lives." 
 
 " That was just nonsense," she murmured. 
 " You remember it ? " 
 
 " I remember every word that you have
 
 spoken, every look that I have seen upon 
 your face. Take me through one of your 
 open doors, and we will go by wood and 
 stream and mountain till we find your tree 
 of life, and will nibble its leaves together." 
 
 " 1 did n't mean anything," said the girl. 
 " I was just teasing you because you studied 
 so much." 
 
 Before them the sun was going down in 
 deep August light behind a row of dull green 
 cedars that let the glory through; from a 
 distant wood thrushes sang, and the damp- 
 ness of oncoming night crept to them over 
 the grass. The woman's voice was broken 
 when she spoke. 
 
 " Are you sure that it is I ? " 
 
 "I am sure," he made answer, " that you 
 are the bit of my heart that was lost when 
 it was broken, ages before I was born ; now 
 that I have found you again, it will be 
 whole once more." 
 
 "I cannot," she said, whispering, "I can- 
 not."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 293 
 
 When he saw the suffering in her face, as 
 the rich nature faced the challenge to keener 
 joy and keener pain, he spared her. Stoop- 
 ing, he gathered from the grass the flowers 
 that had fallen there, then side by side they 
 walked home in the fragrant dusk, with the 
 clustered flowers shining out as a light upon 
 their way. Silence enfolded them, save for 
 the sweet notes of nesting birds, the murmur 
 of the wind-stirred leaves, and the ripple of 
 a tiny brook over its rocky wayside bed. 
 Before them in the west the slender crescent 
 of the new moon hung in the quivering sun- 
 set light of the sky. 
 
 " Like a world of gold to walk into," said 
 the man, for his soul was glad within him. 
 It was true that this woman had said him 
 nay, but in his heart of hearts he knew 
 better.
 
 S94 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 XX 
 
 of them," observed Frances Wilmot 
 to the sea, " is like a sudden squall when 
 the water is all furious, and driven this way 
 and that ; the other the other is like your 
 deepest deep, where dim, rich things lie 
 hidden at the heart of the tides. The squall 
 blows over and the water forgets, but the 
 tide must go endlessly on its appointed way." 
 The sea answered with all its myriad 
 beauty of motion and color and sound. 
 Across the brown rocks, purple-tinted where 
 they gleamed with wet, a great green wave 
 rolled in with exquisite curving, and the 
 girl watched vainly for the moment when 
 the blue of the deep water melted into the 
 green of the wave, and for that when all 
 shifted into pale foam. Leaning back against 
 the rock, her hands clasped behind her head,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 295 
 
 and the wind from the sea blowing back her 
 hair and her fluttering sleeves, she spoke 
 aloud, exultantly, forgetting her decision of 
 yesterday. 
 
 " No one but me knows the treasure hid- 
 den at the heart of him, and it is mine, all 
 mine." 
 
 Delicate, clear morning rested over the 
 sea, and the rising tide brought Frances 
 Wilmot, to whom the everlasting rhythm 
 had grown to mean always a feeling of gain 
 or of loss, strong sense of incoming life. 
 Pale and far, a fairy dream of blue, the 
 water stretched, with myriad sparkles of 
 light, light, light, breaking the surface a 
 thousand ways, moving hither and yon, and 
 gleaming as if invisible mermaids in count- 
 less numbers were waving torches of flame. 
 The freshness of those moments when earth 
 was young was on land and sea, in the early 
 look of blue water and the hints of silver 
 mist not yet cleared from the face of the 
 deep ; and its voice was as the first murmur
 
 296 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 out of primeval quiet. Far away, dim with 
 distance, two fishing boats were daintily 
 riding the waves. Watching them, the girl 
 leaned forward, and her eyes were wet. 
 
 "Tell me if I love him," she begged of 
 her comrade sea. 
 
 The great waves answered her in deep 
 murmur on the rocks, and in faintest ripples 
 over pebble and sand. 
 
 " I did not want to," she whispered, with 
 the sob of the tide in her voice. " I was 
 content, for I had you and all the other 
 beauty, and my old happiness, and my old 
 pain. It was all good, and I saw my way." 
 
 From the heart of the sea to the heart of 
 the woman came a cry, deep calling unto 
 deep. 
 
 " I am afraid," she said brokenly, and 
 the ocean, with moving finger, wrote its in- 
 finite meanings on rock and on sand. 
 
 Frances Wilmot rose and walked along 
 the lonely shore, over pebbly beach and 
 grass-grown headland, and golden butter-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 297 
 
 flies followed as in pursuit. The touch of 
 autumn was over all the land, and the gray 
 cliffs jutting into the water were aster-cov- 
 ered and crowned with yellowing grass. At 
 her feet the tangled blackberry vines were 
 touched with red, and all the hinted purple 
 and crimson and gold seemed to her full of 
 the great encompassing rhythm of things. 
 Wandering the way of the sea, she sang to 
 herself, her song of the fullness of life flow- 
 ing out in melody that only now and then 
 found words. The lilt of her voice caught 
 the sound of the breaking wave, and its low 
 notes chimed with the withdrawing ripple. 
 Little trills as of human laughter broke and 
 splashed with the foaming spray as the singer 
 went on, voice and feet and body keeping 
 the rhythm of the ocean. Tiny sandpipers 
 fluttered away from her in charmed fear, 
 and above, sea gulls listened on outstretched 
 wings. Suddenly, with full melody of sound, 
 her voice echoed a great sense of joy that 
 came to her, smiting like a pang, as soul and
 
 298 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 sense thrilled with unbearable keenness of 
 sudden life. 
 
 " Ah, it hurts ! " she said, hiding in her 
 hands, even from the sea, her face, which 
 glowed with the flush of love and the fear 
 of love. 
 
 She had strolled, with the song on her 
 lips, far out on a rocky headland, when, 
 looking up, she saw, not far away, Alice 
 Bevanne leaning back against a wall of 
 rock, her hands clasped loosely before her. 
 Her clothing of brownish gray was so near 
 in color to that of the rocks that the singer 
 had come very close without observing her, 
 and the song broke off abruptly as the 
 Southern girl stood and watched. Some- 
 thing in the slender strength of the figure 
 with the finely cut face made it seem akin 
 to this delicate shore, where white beach and 
 grass-grown cliff showed singular austerity 
 in their beauty of outline and of coloring. 
 Detached, apart, the girl wore an inscrutable 
 expression, caught from the ancient rocks.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 299 
 
 " Why did n't you tell me that you were 
 here ? " asked Frances Wilmot reproachfully. 
 " You must have heard long ago the great 
 noise I was making." 
 
 Alice Bevanne looked up with her eyes 
 alight as with sudden sunshine on deep 
 sea. 
 
 " I was afraid that you would stop," she 
 said simply, " and you did, just before you 
 got to the final note, the note that I wanted 
 to hear." 
 
 They talked for a time carelessly on the 
 rocks, in the rich summer sunshine already 
 touched with autumn's gold, trying to weave 
 veils of commonplace before the recesses of 
 their hearts, which the accident of meeting 
 .had half revealed. 
 
 " It is almost time for me to go away," 
 said the Southern girl, pointing to clustered 
 purple asters over their heads, and to the 
 least golden-rod that grew in a cleft of the 
 rocks at their feet by the sea. 
 
 " You will never go away," said Alice
 
 300 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 Bevanne, with a little husky quiver in her 
 voice. " That which you are and do can 
 never go." 
 
 " Is it very lonely here in the winter ? " 
 asked Frances. 
 
 The girl looked at her as if startled by 
 the thought that any state save loneliness 
 could be possible, and Frances Wilmot, alight 
 with love and fire, with the great joy of the 
 world kindled in pulse and in finger, gazed 
 at her friend with a new sense of her imper- 
 ishable strength. It seemed as if to her had 
 been granted, in saving grace of sacrifice 
 and of renunciation, a deeper hold on life in 
 letting go than she herself had found in the 
 fulfillment of the heart's desire. Her voice 
 quivered as she laid her hand on Alice 
 Bevanne's, and spoke softly: 
 
 " The note that you were waiting for is 
 too high for me ; I think that no one but 
 you could sing it." 

 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 801 
 
 XXI 
 
 L MARVIN had been right in his esti- 
 mate of the probable action of Uncle Peter 
 when intrusted with his own secret, for 
 the first time in its whole existence it was 
 unsafe. The old man confided it first to 
 Frances Wilmot, with a genuine appeal for 
 sympathy, which was swift and real after a 
 startled outbreak of surprise. It was not 
 hard for the girl to divine the depth of his 
 misery, for he looked suddenly old and 
 wilted and gray. His gay pride in the 
 achievements and the shortcomings of his 
 ancestors broken, there was nothing left for 
 his support. Above their china, above their 
 silver, above their mahogany, he had plumed 
 himself upon their sins ; stuff of his heart 
 and soul were all their deeds of good and of 
 ill, and the corroding rust of contented re-
 
 802 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 pose in ancestral experiences had eaten out 
 all possibilities of action on his own part. 
 Now all was gone, and for the first time he 
 was alone with his own life, and helpless. 
 
 Mrs. Warren was his next confidante ; 
 Miss Wilmot was at the house only now and 
 then, and Uncle Peter wanted somebody who 
 knew near him all the time. To the woman 
 who had borne his whims and listened cour- 
 teously for many years to his endless talk- 
 ing, the shock was great, and the sudden 
 loneliness of the old man tugged at her 
 heartstrings. He had been too long identi- 
 fied with her troubles the cause of many 
 of them for her to give him up lightly, 
 and tears shone on her lashes as he told his 
 tale. He found the sympathy of these two 
 women most sweet ; after all, there were con- 
 soling elements in the situation, romance 
 and mystery, of which he was the hero. It 
 was part of a strange tale which he could 
 perhaps write out some day. 
 
 Toward Paul his action was different. He
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE SOS 
 
 walked into the library one morning, where 
 his nephew was sitting, gnawing the end of 
 a penholder, lost in happy dreams, and told 
 him the whole story, not only of the revela- 
 tion in regard to his birth, but also of his 
 project for disputing the will. Sitting in 
 John Warren's great leather chair, he spoke 
 with the simple dignity of real shame. 
 
 " I could n't go on concealing what I had 
 done, Paul," he said. " Your father would 
 have despised such action, for I never really 
 believed that I was in the right. You, too, 
 would despise it, and you must know." 
 
 Paul, astounded, incredulous, and deeply 
 touched, realized that never in his life had 
 he respected the old man so much as he did 
 in this confession, which showed the influence 
 of the Warren habit of suffering remorse dis- 
 proportionate to misdeed. Then a gleam of 
 amusement shot across the moisture in his 
 eyes as the new Uncle Peter disappeared and 
 the old one came back, whispering : - 
 
 " In a way I did not do it, Paul ; I only
 
 304 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 saw it done, and could not stop it. It was 
 as if I were but the instrument of some all- 
 compelling force. Many would call it an 
 offense ; I call it a phenomenon, for you 
 cannot get back of scientific law. It was not 
 I who sinned, it was nature who sinned 
 against me ; the great ancestral host moved 
 hajid and brain." 
 
 Here Uncle Peter's voice broke as he sud- 
 denly realized that this great ancestral host 
 was no longer his, and that he could not ex- 
 plain himself ever again in terms of great- 
 great-grandfather Warren. To Paul's kindly 
 suggestion that one line of forbears would 
 perhaps fit as well as another that explana- 
 tion of one's shortcomings, he responded only 
 with gloomy silence ; then, thrown upon 
 himself by virtue of his late misdeed and his 
 confession, he took a new stand of moral 
 firmness. 
 
 " I shall go away, Paul, for I have no right 
 here, especially in the light of what I have 
 done."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 305 
 
 The young man reached across the table 
 and shook Uncle Peter's dejected hand. 
 
 " You will do nothing of the kind with my 
 consent. A man belongs where he has lived 
 his life, and my father would never forgive 
 me if harm came to you." 
 
 "But my my plot," whispered Uncle 
 Peter. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Paul. " It did not 
 amount to anything, and I have always 
 felt, as you have, that the distribution was 
 wrong." 
 
 "It was strange, was n't it ? " said the old 
 man appreciatively. 
 
 " It was! " Paul assented heartily. 
 
 " Young Mr. Bevanne felt it, too," con- 
 fided Uncle Peter. " His sympathy in all 
 this trial has meant much to me. I wish 
 you knew him better." 
 
 Paul growled something under his breath. 
 
 " He is extremely sensitive to other peo- 
 ple's troubles, and I could hardly have come 
 through this without his delicate under-
 
 306 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 standing and his advice. Oh, he has done 
 nothing reprehensible," for his nephew's 
 eyes suddenly blazed. " He merely thought 
 that there was a wrong there to right, and 
 has given what help he could." 
 
 Paul's mother, meeting him in the hall as 
 he went from the interview with Uncle Peter, 
 wondered at the anger in his face. 
 
 " He has told you ! " she exclaimed, touch- 
 ing her son's sleeve with gentle fingers. 
 " Don't be hard on him, Paul. Your father 
 always made allowances for Peter, and he 
 has not been deceiving us ; he never knew." 
 
 " I wonder what kind of a brute you think 
 me, mother!" said Paul, with a sudden 
 smile. " Can't you realize that there are cer- 
 tain things that a son of yours would never 
 even feel tempted to do ? " 
 
 As the days went on Paul Warren treated 
 the old man even more kindly than of old ; 
 the irony of the situation was punishment 
 enough, he said to himself, and Nemesis had 
 been almost too swift. To his own amuse-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 307 
 
 ment, a feeling of freedom and relief took 
 possession of him, for the dark incubus of 
 his boyhood's days departed, and the host 
 of phantom ancestors conjured up by Uncle 
 Peter fled into gray distance as their leader, 
 with all his theories, stood routed by one 
 simple fact. It was strange, Paul mused, that 
 that which had been so solemn a thing to his 
 earlier years should go with such sense of 
 rippling merriment, but the world seemed all 
 echoing with laughter to Paul Warren in these 
 days, for joy had descended upon him at last, 
 blotting out past and future. To waken 
 every morning to a sense of the incredible 
 beauty of his lot ; to fall asleep every night 
 with the feeling that happiness too great to 
 grasp was his, was an experience that lay 
 outside all that he had previously known of 
 life. As he walked up and down the great 
 stairway, past the old clock that had ticked 
 away his forefathers' lives, and the great por- 
 traits that had been the terror of his child- 
 hood, he stopped sometimes to ask, "Is it
 
 I ? " Moments came when the intolerable joy 
 was keenest hurt, so finely was his spirit 
 strung. His occasional realization that a wo- 
 man had refused his offered love could not 
 break his mood ; perhaps he dreamed that 
 her spoken no was a waiting yes ; perhaps 
 was content with the feeling that, whether 
 she was to be his or no, the joy of life was 
 his with its thrill, its sting, its pain. 
 
 He found her one day in the garden, 
 seated on a green bench near the spot where 
 he had seen her first. Sunlight lay on her 
 dark hair and her white gown, as she told a 
 tale to the least Andrew Lane, who was sit- 
 ting open-mouthed upon the grass near her, 
 by a gray kitten that lay asleep in the sun, 
 its head upon its warm paws. She had 
 played much with the child during the sum- 
 mer, and had taught him all her lore. 
 
 " I like stories," said Andy suggestively. 
 
 What kind of stories ? " 
 
 " Fairy stories are best, but I should like 
 one I have never heard."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 309 
 
 "And what about?" 
 
 " I think," said the little man, after re- 
 flection, " about my kitty." 
 
 " Your kitty asleep or awake ? " asked 
 Frances Wilmot gravely. 
 
 A smile of deep interest rippled across the 
 child's face. 
 
 " He is asleep now ; I think I should like 
 it about my kitty asleep." 
 
 The Southern girl leaned back, thinking, 
 and then the story began. 
 
 " This is called < The Kitten's Dream.' " 
 
 " Who wrote it ? " demanded Andy. 
 
 " Nobody wrote it ; I just felt it, and I am 
 going to tell it to you. The kitten dreamed 
 that he was running ; did n't you see his 
 paws twitch just now ? " 
 
 " No, but they do sometimes," admitted 
 the child. " I know that he likes to run 
 better than anything else." 
 
 " The kitten dreamed that he gave a little 
 leap one day and sprang into a world where 
 everything danced and moved all the time,
 
 310 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 so that there was something to chase forever 
 and ever, to the end of the dream, to the 
 end of the world. There were little silvery 
 mice that ran and ran, with their long tails 
 dangling behind them; and there were green 
 grasshoppers that hopped and hopped ; and 
 beautiful toads of green and brown that 
 jumped and jumped, but always sideways. 
 There were fluttering butterflies of many 
 colors that flew this way and that on wings 
 that were yellow or blue or green with won^ 
 derful markings, and he chased them all and 
 never caught any, and he was glad." 
 
 "My kitty catches grasshoppers some- 
 times," ventured Andy. 
 
 " Does n't he look sorry ? " demanded the 
 story-teller. 
 
 " Maybe," said the boy, thinking hard. 
 " I never thought of that." 
 
 "In this country of the kitten's dream, 
 when the apples fell from the trees they 
 rolled and rolled and never stopped ; there 
 were green ones, and golden ones, and deep,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 311 
 
 deep red ones, and they flashed away 
 through the grass. The only thing that 
 troubled the kitten was that he could not 
 chase them all at the same time. 
 
 " The only flowers that grew here were 
 flowers that moved and nodded - 
 
 " I 've seen them ! " interrupted the child, 
 visibly excited, " daisies and buttercups 
 and wild honeysuckle." 
 
 The story-teller assented. 
 
 " There were others, too, for all flowers 
 move and dance if you only watch. Here 
 the little green leaves twinkled and moved 
 all the time, for the swiftest breeze chased 
 and chased everything there, flower and 
 leaf, butterfly and grasshopper, to the end 
 of the world, where some buttercups nodded 
 over the very edge ; and in chasing the 
 breeze the kitten chased everything at once. 
 Most gladly of all the little wind ran after 
 the tall grass that grew in the meadow, and 
 made it move in great waves like the waves 
 of the sea."
 
 312 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " That 's where I 've seen the daisies," 
 said Andy, nodding eagerly. " Tell me about 
 some more things that went." 
 
 " I must not forget the brooks : there 
 were little brooks that leaped and hopped, 
 all full of golden sparkles, and it was as much 
 as ever tire kitten could do to keep up with 
 one. In the brooks were fish with beautiful 
 scales of many colors, silver and rose and 
 purple all shading into one another, and the 
 kitten played tag with the fish." 
 
 " But did n't he get wet ? He just hates 
 water." 
 
 " The dream that the kitten had of tenest," 
 said Frances Wilmot gravely, " was that the 
 water did not make him wet. He could get 
 into it with all four paws and tail to follow 
 the fish, but he never caught them, and he 
 never caught the brook, for it ran away from 
 him, and he never caught the lovely golden- 
 brown lights and shadows in the bed of the 
 stream where the pebbles were, for whenever 
 he put his foot on them they were gone."
 
 " Was it always summer ? " asked the 
 boy. " It is n't here." 
 
 " No, sometimes it was winter, and there 
 were great white snowflakes falling here and 
 there, to follow and to follow. On cold nights 
 there were warm fires in the great fireplace, 
 and beautiful flames curled and danced and 
 fluttered, only they made him sad, for they 
 were bad for kitten paws. He knew, for 
 once he had chased a little flame and had 
 caught it, poor kitten ! He liked better the 
 little golden sunbeams moving on old gray 
 stone walls in summer, and he ran after these 
 by the hour, with leaf shadows moving in 
 them, but he never caught any. 
 
 " But these are only things on earth. 
 Often he dreamed of following through the 
 sky great birds with blue wings, and birds 
 with green wings, and birds with long white 
 tails that fluttered just ahead. There were 
 little mists and clouds, too, floating, float- 
 ing away, and he often dreamed of running 
 how he never knew through the air,
 
 314 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 and chasing now a rosy cloud and now a 
 white one with purple shadows, but if he 
 ever got his paw on one it parted and floated 
 on in a hundred little shapes of cloud, rose- 
 colored or white, leaving the kitten distracted 
 way up in the blue sky." 
 
 " Did n't he ever catch anything at all ? " 
 asked a grieved voice. 
 
 Frances Wilmot bent and stroked the 
 child's tawny hair. 
 
 " The kitten was a very wise one, and it 
 always dreamed of running and running 
 after things, and never catching them." 
 
 The kitten woke and stretched itself in 
 the sun, then lazily rose and began to chase 
 a bit of thistledown that floated past on the 
 warm air. 
 
 " See ! " said Frances Wilmot triumph- 
 antly. 
 
 Andy looked after the kitten with new 
 interest, then followed it as fast as bare feet 
 could go. It was then that Paul Warren 
 came out from the cool shadow of the cedar
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 315 
 
 trees and looked down at the face whose hu- 
 morous sadness told how near to her deeper 
 thought the whimsical tale had gone. 
 
 " What wicked philosophy are you teach- 
 ing that child ? " he asked. 
 
 "It is truth," she said gravely. " It is 
 only the escape of beauty that is beautiful, 
 the feeling it come and go." 
 
 " And of love ? " 
 
 " Perhaps it is the same with love," she 
 answered, whispering, with her eyes closed 
 under the sun. "It is so great; it comes, 
 wave after wave, like the sea, like a great 
 sea that has no shore ; perhaps it goes the 
 same way, who can tell ? " 
 
 " Then you have felt it coming?" he asked 
 in a voice that trembled. 
 
 " I think," she answered, " that I have 
 felt the ripples about my feet." 
 
 He bent and kissed her where the dark 
 hair met the brow, and her eyes, as they 
 slowly opened, saw a sudden dimness in his. 
 She smiled wistfully up at him.
 
 316 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Only, if we try to bid this moment stay, 
 we may never again find one so exquisite ; 
 perhaps it would be better to let it go, and 
 to be forever pursuing and free." 
 
 He took her hands and held them fast 
 within his own ; then, as a full realization of 
 his joy swept over him, he bowed his head 
 upon them, crying out : 
 
 " I am unworthy, unworthy, but .1 love 
 you. You are not afraid to come ? " 
 
 " Yes, " she made answer, " I am afraid, 
 but I will come."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 317 
 
 XXII 
 
 J_ HE beauty of autumn deepened over sea 
 and land as the September days went swiftly 
 by. Clearer, crisper blue lay on the water, 
 while all things growing by field and shore, 
 the bulrushes in the swamp land, the grass 
 on the upland slopes, aster, golden-rod, and 
 fern blended into one dim harmony. This- 
 tle-down and milkweed bloom floated noise- 
 lessly past the girl who wandered by shore 
 and by inland paths, feeling in all the throb- 
 bing, passing color the very pulse of nature's 
 life beating on her own. 
 
 Through these long days of dream, when 
 ' earth dreamed with her, her eyes were dim 
 with happiness, broken only by the fear that 
 joy had woven about her too potent a spell, 
 and that nothing could break it hencefor- 
 ward, not the call of human suffering nor the
 
 318 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 old quick sense of human need. Then the 
 mood passed ; her own heart and the wide 
 horizon line bore witness to the larger life 
 that was rippling within her own. 
 
 She was much alone in these days, except 
 when Paul Warren or his mother was with 
 her, for she shunned the Bevanne household, 
 fearing to meet Alec Bevanne. The scene 
 on the rocks at Tern Island was too vivid 
 and too terrible for her to wish a repetition, 
 and the young man's face, wrought out of 
 its old semblance by overmastering passion, 
 haunted her dreams. The few occasions on 
 which she had seen him since that day 
 brought her no relief ; to be sure, the flame 
 had died out of his face, but the darkened 
 eyes and sullen mouth filled her with re- 
 morse for the wrong she had unwittingly 
 done him. 
 
 She grieved that she must meet Alice 
 Bevanne less and less, and grieved the more 
 because she saw the record of fresh trouble 
 written in the girl's eyes. Longing to ques-
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 319 
 
 tion her, but not daring, she stood aloof, 
 fancying at times that Alice was aware of 
 her brother's story ; at these moments her 
 friend's expression became to her but the 
 visible picture of the anxiety in her own 
 mind. Again she realized that this could be 
 to the New England girl but one strand in 
 the dark web which fate had woven about 
 her, and remorse changed back to pity. 
 
 They were walking side by side along the 
 quiet shore- one evening, for Alice had come 
 in the old fashion to the Inn, and were 
 watching the faint, last flush of day fade 
 into twilight over dim water and dusky 
 shore. The moon, which had hung like a 
 pale shield against the blue, gleamed round 
 and golden as they paced the sand, and in 
 the broad pathway of light a spectral ship 
 with all sails set moved down the water as 
 if going from one land of faery to another. 
 Suddenly the mystical charm of the moment 
 was broken, and Frances Wilmot felt her 
 friend's hand quiver on her arm. Following
 
 320 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 the glance of her straining eyes, she saw, 
 ahead, on the rocks which lay bare in the 
 moonlight, a swift shadow moving close, too 
 close, to the water ; a man's white hat 
 gleamed out by the edge of the cliff, then 
 disappeared. Alice Bevanne broke from her 
 side, ran, fleet of foot, to the rocks, climbed 
 hastily up, and the sound of voices came 
 back to the Southern girl, who stood alone 
 on the white sand, her heart throbbing with 
 a nameless fear. Presently Alice came back, 
 and was silent as before. 
 
 " What is it ? " demanded Frances Wil- 
 mot. 
 
 " Nothing," answered the girl hastily. " I 
 was afraid for a minute, but it is all right." 
 
 " I will not be put off in this way," said 
 Frances. 
 
 " It is only Alec," said the other reluc- 
 tantly, averting her face. " He has not 
 seemed like himself lately, something has 
 troubled him ; we are afraid of melancholia, 
 and I am watching him a little."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 321 
 
 " What caused it ? " asked Frances, a 
 quiver in her voice. 
 
 "Nothing that could be helped," answered 
 Alice quietly ; then she turned her face, and 
 her friend saw that she knew. 
 
 "Ah!" cried Frances piteously, "you 
 have so much to vex you ! Why should I 
 be sent to make life harder in so many 
 ways ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Alice, laying a finger on 
 her friend's lips. " You have done nothing, 
 nothing, do you understand, that has been 
 your fault. To me you have been sheer bless- 
 ing." 
 
 Later, from a clump of birches near the 
 top of the cliff, Frances watched brother 
 and sister going home together along the 
 grass-grown road across the moorland ; and 
 standing alone, while the little leaves flut- 
 tering in the night-wind on forehead and 
 cheek and the soft chirp of crickets min- 
 gling with the murmur of water brought 
 her an almost unbearable sense of fullness
 
 322 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 of life, she marveled at the growth of a soul 
 where all that makes existence sweet had 
 been denied. Achievement was already 
 written on this girl's face, in delicate pencil- 
 ings, and soft shadows at temple and eye. 
 It was one that could never show faded 
 beauty, immortal meanings being written 
 there. 
 
 That night Alice Bevanne stood long by 
 her open window, with the cool night air on 
 her lifted face, looking out into the shad- 
 owed night. Of what she was thinking none 
 could tell : not the crickets chirping out- 
 side, nor the golden moon across the water, 
 nor the scraggly locust trees that had guarded 
 and shadowed her life. Then, going over to 
 her mirror to unfasten the old-fashioned gold 
 pin at the throat of her white woolen gown, 
 she suddenly bent and blew out the candles 
 in the branching candelabra, as if her reflec- 
 tion had startled her with an expression of 
 sharing her confidence, for Alice Bevanne 
 was reticent even in the presence of her
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 323 
 
 mirror, and faced her own image with an 
 expression which said, " Hitherto shalt thou 
 come and no farther." Far, far away, as she 
 lay sleeping on her pillow that night, seemed 
 the beating of the tide ; far, far away the 
 ebb and flow of human life, so poignantly 
 her own without any share. 
 
 As September lingered by the shore, the 
 air was full of the breathlessness of coming 
 change ; then, out of the silence across the 
 sea, came a great autumn storm. It began 
 with a day of darkened sky and of ominous 
 stillness; the slow waves on the purple- 
 tinged rocks seemed thrilling with some 
 deep sense of stir at the depths of things. 
 Frances Wilmot was vaguely troubled ; lis- 
 tening on the rocks with strained ears she 
 murmured her song of the tide, and into it 
 crept a soft moan, drawn from the inner 
 heart of pain. This sea was strange to her 
 who had known and loved it in so many 
 phases, its stillest, most silvery look, its 
 endlessly paling and deepening blue, and its
 
 324 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 swift, brief summer storms. Could this be 
 her ocean, at whose edge she had so often 
 waited in the soft ripple of darkness and 
 of water, sometimes helping pile driftwood 
 high, to watch the leaping golden flame of 
 fire by the white flame of the waves ? Now, 
 under the low, dull purple clouds, came a 
 sullen, lashing wind, bringing gusts of blind- 
 ing rain. All things far were blotted from 
 sight ; from the window could be seen only 
 blackened sky and darkened sea, against 
 which gleamed streaks of livid foam. The 
 dismal booming of the waves on the rocks 
 sounded through day and night, and a great 
 wind rushed from the water, shaking the Inn 
 to its foundations, crashing in the branches 
 of trees, and carrying the moan of the sea 
 to the very heart of the forest. 
 
 Three days and nights the fury of the 
 gale lasted, and one by one the ladies of the 
 
 O / 
 
 Emerson Inn deserted, while the schoolmis- 
 tress maid, with heart beating fast in expec- 
 tation, disappeared, joining the ranks of those
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 325 
 
 who seek glory beyond the far horizon. Mis- 
 tress Somebody from Somewhere was the 
 first of the guests to depart ; the house was 
 going to rock, she observed, like a vessel in 
 a tornado, and she had had enough expe- 
 rience of that kind. It was when the storm 
 was at its height that the Lady from Cin- 
 cinnati went, resolute, disregarding driving 
 wind and pelting rain. She was not afraid of 
 crashing branches, nor did she think wind 
 or rain would hurt the horses, and she had 
 two lectures to make ready at once for a 
 woman's club. Waterproof-clad, with a thick 
 veil tied under her chin, she looked through 
 the dripping windows to see that her trunks 
 were well covered in the express wagon, 
 then bent and kissed Frances Wilmot's 
 brow. 
 
 " We have all gained a great deal from 
 one another this summer, have ri't we ? " she 
 said, holding the girl's hand. Then she went 
 out into the wet world, and disappeared be- 
 hind the lashing branches of the pines on
 
 826 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 the hill, down the streaming road, and passed 
 from sight forever. But the little Lady 
 from Boston stayed on, glorying in the 
 storm, as the rain ceased, and still the clouds 
 hung low, and a great wind blew and blew. 
 Higher and higher rose the sea. Dark 
 and incredibly great came the strong racers 
 of ocean, their high crests breaking in green 
 curves, the green foaming into white. To 
 Frances Wilmot, in her wonder and awe, it 
 seemed as if lines of mountain had suddenly 
 broken into quick movement, and were com- 
 ing on in an awful march of terror and of 
 beauty, of roar and thunder, of color and 
 shadow and foam..
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 XXIII 
 
 XT was Uncle Peter who carried to Alec 
 Bevanne the news concerning the happiness 
 that had come upon the Warren household, 
 a chastened, quiet Uncle Peter, whose 
 manner had lost something of its airy assur- 
 ance. He had come out in driving wind to- 
 day, though ordinarily the savage aspects of 
 nature appealed to him but slightly, to watch 
 the great waves rolling in under a darkened 
 sky. The storm which had vanished from the 
 upper air seemed to have betaken itself to 
 the very heart of the sea, and to be raging 
 there, secret, unappeasable. The mountain 
 waves of yesterday were gone, yet more aw- 
 ful was the mighty stirring of the depths. 
 
 On the spray-dashed rocks he found Alec 
 Bevanne, standing idly with his hands in his 
 pockets and his felt hat pulled low over his
 
 328 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 eyes, dejected as if partaking of the mood 
 of moaning wind and sullen sea. He hardly 
 glanced at Uncle Peter, but stood apart, and 
 the look in his blue eyes was that of one 
 so withdrawn in his inner trouble that the 
 beating waves of human life could not break 
 entrance there. It grieved Uncle Peter, who 
 could not bear the sight of suffering, nor a 
 cold look from one who had been his friend ; 
 and, drawing near, he held out his withered 
 old hand in greeting. The other shook it 
 mechanically, with a look that suggested 
 blank unconsciousness that any one was 
 there rather than active desire that he 
 should go away. With a wish to comfort 
 and to cheer, Uncle Peter, mysteriously 
 touching the lapel of the young man's coat, 
 said in a half whisper : 
 
 " You look as if a bit of good news would 
 do you good. In confidence I can tell you 
 that our charming Miss Wilmot has con- 
 sented to become one of our of the War- 
 ren family, in fact, to become Paul's wife."
 
 Genuine gladness sounded in Uncle Peter's 
 voice : romance in any form he loved, it 
 need not be his own. In this mood of ex- 
 hilaration he entirely forgot the passion of 
 his young neighbor for Miss Wilmot, forgot 
 until he saw his face, and then was frightened 
 by the pallor that crept over cheek and 
 forehead, and by the tightening of the lips 
 and the cords of the neck. It was too late 
 to do anything to repair his mistake, and 
 Uncle Peter wisely resolved to go. He did 
 so, tripping hastily over wet rock and slip- 
 pery stone, for he felt that he was old and 
 no longer strong of arm, and he had seen 
 the sudden clenching of Alec Bevanne's 
 fists, with full realization that he had before 
 him a man beside himself with rage. 
 
 " There have been two cases of insanity 
 in that family," said Uncle Peter breathlessly 
 to himself, as he gained a safe "place of wet 
 grass in the cove. 
 
 Alec Bevanne was left alone upon the 
 rocks, and, restless as the restless sea, he
 
 330 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 strolled along the shore with movements 
 which suggested that the wind had its way 
 with him and bent him to its will. Beyond 
 the Emerson Inn he suddenly found Frances 
 Wilmot at the edge of the little cove where 
 his father's old dory was pulled high upon 
 the sand. The girl was standing with wind- 
 tossed hair driven back from her forehead, 
 and her golf cape blown from her shoulders 
 with a motion that resembled the flutter of 
 wings. Joy of the passion of the sea was 
 strong upon her, as was shown by the look 
 of her face when the spray touched it, and 
 by the eyes that watched the inky purple 
 of the far water, the great green curling 
 waves, and the gray gulls far and near. She 
 stood, braced with tense muscles against the 
 wind, unconscious of him, unconscious of 
 everything save the stormy beauty and the 
 thunder of ocean. 
 
 As he saw her, he stopped for a moment 
 and stood rigid, with his hands clenched 
 tightly at his sides. Then a quiver went
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 381 
 
 through him, and he shook with something 
 that was not the might of the wind ; an evil 
 look came to the bright blue eyes as he 
 went to her down the shore path where fern 
 and goldenrod lay beaten low by the past 
 fury of the storm. When he spoke to her, 
 it was with a voice that trembled through 
 his effort to appear entirely self -con trolled. 
 
 "Miss Wilmot," he said eagerly, "I am 
 going to ask a very great service of you." 
 
 She turned to him, smiling through the 
 spray. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 The rush of the wind and the roar of 
 the breakers almost drowned his voice, 
 and he came close to her before he spoke 
 again. 
 
 " My sister Alice," he said quickly, and 
 as he spoke she no longer wondered at his 
 uncontrollable agitation, " is out yonder on 
 the point beyond Storm Cove. She went 
 out early this afternoon, mistaking the tide ; 
 it must have surprised her there and cut
 
 her off from the mainland. There is but one 
 way to save her, and there is no one else 
 near. Will you help ? I think that the 
 Rocket will weather the waves ; I 'm a fairly 
 good sailor, you know, and there is no such 
 sea on as there was yesterday." 
 
 She marveled at the length and the care- 
 fulness of his explanation, and answered 
 before his last word was said. 
 
 " Alice in danger ? Of course I will come ! 
 Quick! Push out the dory, and I will 
 help ! " 
 
 She looked at the raging water and the 
 long, white streaks of foam, knowing no fear 
 in the excitement of the moment and the sud- 
 den call of need. The man's hands grasped 
 the boat, and, with strength that was not 
 all of muscle, dragged it to the water, then, 
 when he had bade her leap in, pulled out 
 into the waves with vehement will. Admi- 
 ration for his courage and his skill stung 
 her with sudden penitence as she realized 
 that she had misjudged in the past the man
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 333 
 
 whose love for his sister could nerve him to 
 deeds so great. 
 
 " Could n't we go on in the dory ? " she 
 asked, as they drew near the Rocket, which 
 was tugging at her buoy as she rode the 
 waves, now on the crest, now plunging into 
 the trough. 
 
 " No, no ! " he shouted back. " There, 1 
 have her. Jump ! " 
 
 Obedient to his bidding, yet now half 
 afraid, she sprang into the boat and crawled 
 to the helm ; the man leaped after her, and, 
 with a shout that had a ring of exultation in 
 it, ran up the sail, tugging at the wet halyards 
 with fingers that trembled in strong excite- 
 ment ; then slipped his mooring, and they 
 were away. 
 
 "So much sail in this sea?" asked Frances 
 Wilmot ; courage like this man's was a splen- 
 did thing, she said nervously to herself. 
 
 " She '11 carry it ! " he cried back. " Fine, 
 is n't it?" 
 
 The Rocket leaped and plunged, and rose
 
 834 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 again, lay almost on her beam ends, and went 
 out on the great rolling waves. The strain 
 on the girl's muscles as she clung to the tiller 
 was almost unbearable, yet with it came the 
 joy of struggle, and a feeling of triumph as 
 one breaker after another, crashing against 
 the bow, dashed the spray from stem to 
 stern and went seething past. Across the 
 wash of wave and of spray she saw with 
 wonder the look of delight in her compan- 
 ion's eyes, and the brilliant spots of red 
 that stained the pallor of his cheeks. A dull 
 feeling of alarm paralyzed her hands, and 
 the boat swayed and tossed as a great wave 
 struck her almost abeam. When, with strain- 
 ing timbers, the Rocket had righted herself, 
 Frances was horrified to see that the man, 
 with insane exultation, was making ready to 
 run up the jib. 
 
 "I cannot hold her," she called quickly. 
 " You must take my place." 
 
 He did her bidding, grasping tiller and 
 sheet, and the girl, creeping cautiously
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 335 
 
 toward the bow, faced the shore and saw 
 that they were heading, in a course that led 
 past the Inn and past the Warren place, 
 toward a point that jutted into the water 
 toward the south. Suddenly she cried 
 aloud : - 
 
 " But, Mr. Bevanne you are mistaken, 
 we need not go ! There is Alice running 
 along the rocks." 
 
 He looked at her, and for the first time 
 spoke calmly. 
 
 " I am not mistaken : I have lied." 
 " Is n't Alice in danger ? " 
 " I judge not, from what I see." 
 " Why have you done this thing ? " 
 Her scorn stung him as wind and spray 
 could not sting. 
 
 " Because it is the only thing left to do," 
 he said dully. " If we may not live together, 
 we must die together; there is no other 
 way. If we upset, and I pray we may, there 
 will be an end of my misery ; that is all." 
 Even in her moment of supreme danger,
 
 836 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 when she saw the reckless motions of his 
 hands, and knew that every inch of the 
 mainsail was spread to this storm wind, pity 
 touched the woman's heart for this man 
 who was as a bit of driftwood in the great 
 tide of passion that carried him whither it 
 would. She knew his purpose now ; he had 
 made all ready for the disaster which he 
 knew might any minute come. 
 
 Meanwhile, Alice Bevanne was running 
 over the winding shore path toward the 
 Warren house, running as she had never run 
 before, yet with speed that seemed to her 
 but a snail's pace. Wet grass caught at her 
 damp skirts and stayed her steps ; scrub-pine 
 and juniper reached out detaining fingers 
 to hold her back. Here was the high rock 
 where Paul Warren and she had sat en- 
 throned as king and queen when she was 
 six years old, with Alec for retainer or for 
 rival monarch, as the occasion demanded, in 
 those sweet hours of stolen play of which 
 nothing was ever said at home ; and just
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE^ 837 
 
 beyond was the cove where, the haughty 
 footsteps of the retreating queen having led 
 her too near the edge, she had fallen into 
 the water, Paul Warren plunging to the res- 
 cue. These and myriad other pictures came 
 back to her as the swift feet sped over root 
 and pebble, bringing to the swifter spirit 
 only a nightmare consciousness of standing 
 still. 
 
 Near the boathouse in the cove she found 
 Paul Warren, who was examining wharf 
 and shore in order to see what damage had 
 been done by the great storm. He lifted his 
 head and looked at her in amazement, won- 
 dering what alarm could so transform the 
 quietest face he knew. 
 
 " Mr. Warren,'' gasped the girl breath- 
 lessly, " something is wrong, there is dan- 
 ger,, you must go out " 
 
 Dumb with wonder, he looked over the 
 waste of water, following the direction in 
 which her finger pointed. 
 
 " It is Alec ; he is not himself any longer,
 
 338 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 and he has taken Miss Wilmot out in the 
 Rocket. I do not understand, but see ! " 
 
 Out on the water, rocking, sinking, rising 
 again, Paul Warren saw a white rag of sail, 
 forlorn and far as a lost hope. 
 
 " In a sea like this ! " he cried. 
 
 " Go quickly ! I will come with you, for 
 you know that I can row. The wind is beat- 
 ing them in toward shore, you see. Alec 
 Alec does not know what he is doing." 
 
 At his side, inspiring, suggesting, calming, 
 the girl worked as one to whom the magic 
 vision has been granted of the one right 
 thing to do. The oars were close at hand in 
 the boathouse ; as he pushed out the dory, 
 the woman stepped into the water at his 
 side. 
 
 " I dare not let you go ! " he panted. 
 
 " I dare not stay," she answered. 
 
 There was a quick breath on his hand ; a 
 head was laid upon it in the old affectionate 
 way of Robin Hood's earlier years. With a 
 joyous bark the dog leaped into the waves
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 339 
 
 after his master, and, as if the sense of com- 
 ing danger, working along the delicate nerves 
 of the beast, had at last brought him con- 
 viction of something supremely right to be 
 done, he tried to follow, but was driven back 
 by the might of the breakers. Wild with 
 excitement, he ran along the shore, leaping 
 and barking, as the dory fought its way to- 
 ward the south, cutting across the path of 
 the Rocket, until, plunging in again, he was 
 carried out by a retreating wave, and swam 
 out bravely over the stormy water. 
 
 Paul Warren did not see this, nor did 
 he see, in the face of Alice Bevanne, her 
 fierce joy at sharing the danger of the 
 beings whom she loved. Even when she 
 spoke, he hardly heard her, though he me- 
 chanically obeyed the voice full of the quiet 
 courage and self-possession of the girl's daily 
 life : - 
 
 " Head up a little ! You can save her ; the 
 Rocket has n't capsized." 
 
 An awful energy of passion lent to the
 
 arms of the man a strength as the strength 
 of ten, for, as they met and breasted the 
 waves, rising, gliding over, sinking in the 
 trough of the next, fury such as he had never 
 known descended upon him. It was a mo- 
 ment when all the inheritances of his life 
 met and clashed, and the fire smouldering for 
 generations blazed up all the more fiercely 
 for the protecting ashes that had covered it. 
 To reach this coward and fling him into the 
 sea, to rescue the woman he loved, ridding 
 the earth of the presence of this vile crea- 
 ture before it could again be fit for the 
 tread of her feet, this was the one swelling 
 desire of his heart. He was not thinking, 
 the tempest within him was too strong 
 for that ; but through his mind, borne as 
 dead leaves are borne by a furious gale, 
 
 */ O 9 
 
 were drifting old words, old memories, old 
 pictured scenes. His father's death had come 
 back to him, and, like a cry in his ears, 
 more vivid to sense than the scream of the 
 gulls as they followed the trough of the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 341 
 
 waves hunting their prey, came the words 
 which had bade him fight out the Bevanne 
 brood. The elder Bevanne's pitifully weak 
 love-letter came to him as a call to action, 
 for each phrase recalled some look upon the 
 face of the son when his eyes had rested on 
 Frances Wilmot; and Paul Warren cursed 
 himself that he, who had known the strength 
 of the man's hopeless love, had not meas- 
 ured by it the extent of the woman's dan- 
 ger. So old passions hunted like unleashed 
 hounds within his soul, and the memory of 
 love's sweetness and its hope were driven 
 out by elemental fury. 
 
 It was no easy task set that day for the 
 strong arms of the man, as he battled with 
 the irresistible might of the sea. Nearer and 
 nearer came the black hull on the water, 
 driven shoreward by the strong east wind, 
 while the dipping white sail more than once 
 seemed to disappear. A thing of nerve and 
 muscle, with no sense save that of vision, 
 Paul Warren strained toward that white rag
 
 8J& THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 whose rising and falling on the waves meant 
 cruel Tantalus hope. Each time he lost it, 
 his heart dragged down as with the weight 
 of chains, down to the depths of the sea, of 
 whose glories this woman had told him with 
 laughter. The memory of her words brought 
 him only pictures of her pale face and tan- 
 gled hair lying among those dim, rich things 
 of shadowy green and gold. 
 
 Now they were near enough to discern 
 clearly the figures in the boat, and as the 
 possibility of rescuing the woman he loved 
 became more strong, the white anger within 
 him burned higher in uncontrollable quiet. 
 Ah, his father had been right, and he, in his 
 ignorance, had not known. Between him 
 and the tossing, careening Rocket, he plainly 
 saw his father's face, and he heard him say : 
 " Young rattlesnakes are as poisonous as old 
 ones." Surely the heel of man was meant 
 to crush out venomous things. 
 
 Paul Warren's motions were slower as the 
 supreme moment drew near. Masterfully,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 343 
 
 with deep breaths, he took mighty strokes, 
 and the dory crept closer and closer to the 
 wild sailboat as she wallowed to leeward. 
 The eyes of the madman at the helm were 
 fortunately turned away, but Frances Wil- 
 mot, facing the greatness of death, yet full 
 of the certainty that wind nor wave could 
 wrest her from her place at the heart of life, 
 looked and saw her lover coming to her over 
 the waves. It was the face of one who felt 
 himself able to wrestle with death itself, and 
 pluck back the life he loved. The girl bent 
 toward him, and her eyes were full of joy 
 that omnipotent love should come to her 
 thus on the tide of the sea. 
 
 Then the sea which had wrought her dan- 
 ger offered her a slender chance of safety, 
 for, more through a fortunate accident of 
 wind and wave than by the strength of Paul 
 Warren's arms, the dory touched for a brief 
 moment the side of the Rocket. 
 
 " Spring ! " cried Paul, and Frances, with 
 a movement too quick for fear, did his
 
 344 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 bidding. The appealing touch of the girl's 
 wet hair as the wind blew it across his 
 face tingled through him, and he found the 
 angry ocean less hard to fight than was his 
 desire to take her only for an instant in his 
 arms. Then he saw that Alec Bevanne had 
 turned and was facing him, the blue eyes 
 all alight with anger. A madman's frenzy 
 came upon the man left alone in the Rocket, 
 and with the skilled swiftness of a cat he 
 leaped into the dory, almost capsizing it by 
 his sudden weight. He laid his hand upon 
 Frances Wilmot's golf cape, and his head- 
 long motion betrayed the insane hope of 
 upsetting the boat, dragging her with him 
 to the depths. To Paul Warren came a 
 sudden access of fury that was all com- 
 pact of strength; in an instant's time he 
 had lifted the slender form of the intruder 
 in his arms, and had flung him into the sea. 
 A horrified cry rose from the two women, 
 and Alice Bevanne's hold upon the oars 
 loosened as she made a swift movement to
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 345 
 
 follow to her brother's rescue, or to claim 
 his fate. 
 
 " Stop ! " cried Paul Warren, taking the 
 oars from her. " You cannot help him ; 
 there was nothing else to do." 
 
 The girl sank upon the bottom of the 
 boat, covering her face with her hands ; 
 and Frances, taking the vacant seat, rowed 
 stroke for stroke with Paul, glad that there 
 was no time to realize the full horror of 
 the moment. Back to the cove, over the 
 tossing water, up on the great waves, and 
 down again into the depths, rowed Paul 
 Warren, stern vengeance sitting on his fore- 
 head. With fierce passion of which he had 
 never dreamed, he exulted that he had rid 
 the earth of that creature, as he exulted 
 that this woman of all the world was safe, 
 almost safe. A few more strokes, and then 
 
 A great wave dashed them upon the sand 
 of the cove by the Warren house, and with 
 hands that trembled he helped the two 
 drenched figures to alight from the dory.
 
 346 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Go to my mother," he said hoarsely. 
 
 But they turned away, and he watched 
 them as they went toward the Inn, trem- 
 bling as he looked at Frances Wilmot's dark 
 head, then marveling at the light in Alice 
 Bevanne's face. It brought him a dim feel- 
 ing that this girl's heroic nature had more 
 than expiated the sins of both father and 
 brother, and with this, as he looked out over 
 the waste of waters, came a realization of 
 his own deed. 
 
 " I have killed that man," he said simply, 
 as if a mechanical statement of the fact 
 should be offered to the encompassing uni- 
 verse. 
 
 He dragged the dory higher on the sand, 
 the strain on his muscles relieving the ten- 
 sion of the mind. 
 
 " It had to be done," said Paul Warren 
 sternly, throwing back his head and brush- 
 ing the wet hair from his forehead ; " the 
 lives of two women were at stake." 
 
 But something in his heart spoke silently
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 847 
 
 on as he scanned shore and water to see if 
 perchance some incoming wave might not 
 save the drowning man. It was less the deed 
 than the motive for the deed that was in 
 question. Spent passion left his mind free 
 for his old cruelly ironic sense of things. He, 
 whose impossibly high ideals had kept him 
 from sharing the simplest phases of human 
 life, had exulted in flinging a man to his 
 death. He turned and walked down the 
 storm-strewn shore, watching for some sign 
 that it was not too late to help, full of a 
 sense of tumult, before his eyes a feeling as 
 of darkness unlighted, and in his ears the 
 scream of the sea gulls, which seemed to 
 mingle with the scream of evil things in his 
 soul.
 
 SJ8 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 XXIV 
 
 J3uT where is Paul ? " asked Mrs. Warren 
 anxiously of Uncle Peter, as the old man 
 brought her her letters at breakfast. 
 
 " I don't know," said Uncle Peter. " In 
 bed, I presume." 
 
 " No, he must have gone out very early, 
 for I stopped at his room just now to speak 
 to him. I did not see him last night." 
 
 " He must be in the city," suggested Uncle 
 Peter. 
 
 " But he never goes without telling me." 
 
 . " Where 's Robin Hood ? " demanded Uncle 
 Peter suddenly. 
 
 Together they waited, lingering long at 
 the table in the hope that Paul might join 
 them, but he did not come. Aunt Belinda ap- 
 peared as often as possible from the kitchen, 
 torn between a desire to comfort away the
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 349 
 
 worried look from Mrs. Warren's face, and 
 a determination not to recognize its cause. 
 Uncle Peter chattered amiably of everything 
 he could think of, his nervous cheerfulness 
 increasing the mother's agitation at every 
 word ; and then searched house and garden 
 and nearer shore with an incidental air, as if 
 ordered by his doctor to take a zigzag con- 
 stitutional in every direction. Alone, at the 
 window or on the veranda, stood Mrs. War- 
 ren, looking out over the water, which was 
 clearing after the storm, and stretched, in- 
 credibly blue, dark, with white foam at its 
 edge, to the clear horizon line, where it lay 
 in hard relief against the pale blue of the 
 sky. It was a day of no gentleness of mood, 
 but of pitiless beauty and of shrill, unheed- 
 ing wind. 
 
 The Sea Gull was riding up and down 
 unhurt upon the waves; the dory was 
 pulled high and dry upon the sand. Of 
 that wild journey out over the storm-tossed 
 sea of yesterday no traces remained, and
 
 850 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 neither Mrs. Warren nor Uncle Peter knew 
 of it. Aunt Belinda, however, had watched 
 from the kitchen window the launching of 
 the dory and the strange return with the 
 Southern girl, who had not gone forth with 
 the other two, and she kept her own counsel, 
 with much inarticulate muttering to herself 
 among her pots and pans, aware, with that 
 fine animal sensitiveness of her race, of the 
 unspoken trouble in the air. The three 
 waited in vain for note or telegram which 
 would explain for them Paul's absence ; but 
 none came, and with every passing minute 
 of the day the current of foreboding grew 
 more strong. As the afternoon wore on, the 
 color died out of the sea, the life died out of 
 the air, and sky and water stretched away, 
 a dull, gray, leaden waste. 
 
 Late in the day the third Andrew Lane, 
 driver at the Emerson Inn, strolled down the 
 road and paused at his grandfather's house, 
 where the old man sat smoking in a splint- 
 bottomed chair tipped comfortably back.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 351 
 
 " Folks all right ? " asked young Andrew. 
 
 Old Andrew grunted assent, and silently 
 held out his pipe to give the visitor a light. 
 They had puffed on speechlessly for several 
 minutes before young Andrew ventured a 
 further remark. 
 
 " I see young Warren up the shore this 
 mornin', and I thought he looked kind of 
 queer." 
 
 Old Andrew listened sharply, and the 
 wreaths of smoke ceased coming from his 
 mouth. 
 
 " Acted like he was half crazy," ventured 
 young Andrew, who was suffering more agi- 
 tation than he was willing to express, 
 " went searchin' round behind the rocks and 
 lookin' over the edge as if he 'd lost some- 
 thin'." 
 
 " Fishin', likely," said the grandfather, 
 nor could the bearer of ill tidings get any 
 further expression of opinion from the old 
 man, who asked a single question in regard 
 to his young master's whereabouts and then
 
 lapsed into smoky silence. It was not until 
 young Andrew had gone home that old 
 Andrew picked up his battered straw hat, 
 refilled his pipe, and ambled down to the 
 Warren house, where he had a long con- 
 ference with Aunt Belinda. 
 
 Another morning dawned on sea and 
 shore with a pallor that was not light ; Paul 
 Warren had come home at midnight, wan, 
 distraught, and speechless. At the first glim- 
 mer in the east he was up again and away 
 on his search, returning later for a morsel 
 of food, but going out again immediately 
 without explaining his strange conduct. The 
 next, day, Mrs. Warren, unable to endure 
 longer the look of silent misery on her son's 
 face, begged Alice Bevanne to tell Frances 
 Wilmot of this mysterious trouble, and she 
 performed her task as she did all others, un- 
 flinchingly. The Southern girl listened with 
 a face grown pale as the morning ; then the 
 two gazed at each other in silence, eyes and 
 hearts full of the memory of that terrible
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 moment when the avenger had stood up- 
 right in the dory and the head of Alec 
 Bevanne had sunk under the waves. 
 
 "Your brother?" asked Frances, with 
 lips that feared the answer. 
 
 " He is much better," said Alice, " only 
 still very stiff and bruised ; but of course 
 I could not explain to Mrs. Warren, and 
 Mr. Warren, who does not know that Alec 
 came safely home, is not to be found. He 
 must have been searching farther up the 
 coast when Alec was brought to shore by 
 the waves." 
 
 Courage had come back to the heart of 
 Frances. 
 
 " I will find him," she said simply ; " he 
 is somewhere by the sea." 
 
 She rose and passed from the Inn, down 
 the slippery path, past the nodding grasses 
 wet with mist, past tangled beds of wild 
 rosebushes, where red haws showed, and 
 here and there a delicate belated rose. Alice 
 Bevanne stood watching her as she went
 
 354 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 farther and farther away, her dark hair and 
 white gown breaking the encompassing gray ; 
 then turned and went slowly home, alone. 
 
 It was a day of the passing of things, as 
 of an Avalon to which life had not come, or 
 to which memories of life past had floated 
 in shapes of mist. Out of the gray the slight 
 waves broke in lines of white ; spectral 
 pines stood on near height or far, as at the 
 end of the world. Pale-green willow and 
 tall poplar tree beckoned in the moving fog 
 to the very heart of mystery, and white 
 road and grassy path alike seemed to end 
 in cloud on hill or in hollow. As the girl 
 wandered close "by the shore or on the 
 country roads where Paul and she had 
 walked together, eye and ear were strained, 
 but she did not find him. Far or near, the 
 murmur of the ocean came to her, and 
 the answering murmur of the wind in the 
 pines with the immemorial music. Again and 
 again the mist half lifted over a sea of 
 pearly blue, then closed in again, floating,
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 855 
 
 breaking, a soft, palpable grayness every- 
 where. 
 
 Once, as the mist parted, before her on 
 the wet sand she saw stretched out the life- 
 less form of Robin Hood, one paw flung 
 across his eyes as the careless tide had left 
 him there ; she bent and patted the brave 
 dark head. 
 
 But she could not stay, and went on 
 searching by rocky bluff and sheltered cove, 
 the fog again inclosing her, swift as the fall- 
 ing of a veil. The old paths were gone ; 
 familiar landmarks of pine and of cedar 
 were wiped away as by obliterating fin- 
 gers ; and she stopped with a sudden sense 
 of hopeless weariness. Passion had died out 
 of the sea, and there was nothing left but 
 its gray moan. 
 
 Then the will of the woman rose above 
 the will of sky and of sea : somewhere he 
 was waiting for her, of that her assurance 
 was perfect. Somewhere he was listening 
 for her voice which he so loved ; her voice
 
 356 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 
 
 should find him. Across the mist she sent 
 it, the cry of the bird to its wounded mate. 
 It broke into her song of the tide, and as 
 it quivered on the air, it seemed to glow 
 with golden light and color, and to break 
 into iridescent beauty against the gray. 
 Passion and love and faith were set free 
 in the wonderful notes, high and low ; the 
 dropping of human tears was there, ripples 
 of human laughter, and the supreme joy 
 that touches pain. Far off across the mist 
 the man heard it, and knew this woman's 
 deep sense of the melody at the heart of 
 things, beneath the discord and the strife 
 and sin, and he waited, the notes falling on 
 his ear as cool drops of rain might fall on 
 parched lips dying of thirst. She found him 
 at last, exhausted by his fruitless search, 
 leaning against a sheer wall of rock with 
 the white quiet of despair on his face. As 
 she came toward him with outstretched 
 hands, her song died on her lips, for he 
 shrank away.
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 357 
 
 " Don't touch me," he said sternly. 
 
 She paid no heed, but with her old smile 
 drew him to a seat on the rocks, and half 
 fearfully touched the disordered hair on his 
 forehead, then laid cool fingers on his eye- 
 lids, closing them over the tired eyes. 
 
 "Frances, I have sent a man to his 
 death," he said brokenly. 
 
 "Mr. Bevanne came safely home," she 
 whispered. 
 
 Something like a sob broke from him, 
 and the pale lips quivered. 
 
 "I am unspeakably glad for Alice and 
 for her mother, but it does not alter what 
 I did, or tried to do." 
 
 She broke into her song again, and the 
 man at her side, with closed eyes, drank it 
 thirstily in; then, watching the changing 
 expression on his face, she seized her mo- 
 ment and said coaxingly : - 
 
 " Come home ! What do you mean by 
 frightening us all nearly to death ? I have 
 been waiting and waiting for you."
 
 " I did not realize anything," he said 
 hoarsely. " I was searching, at first, for 
 Bevanne. Frances, it is all true, all the old 
 fear that darkened my boyhood, of hands 
 waiting in the dark, clutching you out of 
 the past, making you do their will." 
 
 " It is not true," said the woman bravely, 
 and, drawing nearer, she kissed his eyes 
 and his brow with indescribable tender- 
 ness. 
 
 " That passion like that could master one 
 unaware ! " 
 
 She broke the tragic measure of his voice 
 with a little light, joyous laugh. 
 
 " All that you needed to make you perfect 
 was a little primitive passion ! " 
 
 He stretched out a warning hand to 
 ward her ofF, and paused, gazing at her 
 with steady eyes. 
 
 " I shall never claim you, beloved, for I 
 am not fit. There is nothing in human life 
 but failure and misery and despair. It is 
 only a pitfall set for our feet."
 
 THE COMING OF THE TIDE 359 
 
 Her soft hand lay across his eyes as she 
 whispered : 
 
 " There is nothing anywhere but love ! " 
 
 " Ah, but you were afraid before," he 
 said. 
 
 " That was long ago," she whispered, 
 " before I knew." 
 
 " But you don't understand," said the 
 man's voice, breaking. " In that moment 
 I did not know what I was doing, and I 
 committed a crime. Think how awful the 
 possibilities of things are ! To all intents 
 I killed that man, and, dear, it might be 
 
 you." 
 
 With a sudden fierce sense of pity and of 
 possession she drew his head to her bosom. 
 
 " Then I should say, as Sir Gawaine said 
 of Lancelot, ' Of a more nobler man might 
 I not be slain.'
 
 Eltctrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Cf. 
 Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A.
 
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