SHIFTING SANDS

THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY · PHILADELPHIA

COPYRIGHT 1933 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY

Shifting Sands

Manufactured in the United States of America

Our lives are like the ever shifting sands
Which ocean currents whirl in the ebb and flow
Of their unresisting tides

Chapter I

The Widder lived on the spit of sand jutting out into Crocker's Cove.

Just why she should have been singled out by this significant sobriquet was a subtle psychological problem. There were other women in Belleport and in Wilton, too, who had lost husbands. Maria Eldridge was a widow and so was Susan Ann Beals. Indeed death had claimed the head of many a household in the community, for to follow the sea was a treacherous business.

Nevertheless, despite the various homes in which solitary women reigned, none of their owners was designated by the appellation allotted to Marcia Howe.

Moreover, there seemed in the name the hamlet had elected to bestow upon her a ring of satisfaction, even of rejoicing, rather than the note of condolence commonly echoing in the term. Persons rolled it on their tongues as if flaunting it triumphantly on the breeze.

"Marcia ought never to have married Jason Howe, anyway," asserted Abbie Brewster when one day she reminiscently gossiped with her friend, Rebecca Gill. "She was head an' shoulders above him. Whatever coaxed her into it I never could understand. She could have had her pick of half a dozen husbands. Why take up with a rollin' stone like him?"

"She was nothin' but a slip of a thing when she married. Mebbe she had the notion she could reform him," Rebecca suggested.

"Mebbe," agreed Abbie. "Still, young as she was, she might 'a' known she couldn't. Ten years ago he was the same, unsteady, drinkin' idler he proved himself to be up to the last minute of his life. He hadn't changed a hair. Such men seldom do, unless they set out to; an' Jason Howe never set out to do, or be, anything. He was too selfish an' too lazy. Grit an' determination was qualities left out of him. Well, he's gone, an' Marcia's well rid of him. For 'most three years now, she's been her own mistress an' the feelin' that she is must be highly enjoyable."

"Poor Marcia," sighed Rebecca.

"Poor Marcia?" Abbie repeated. "Lucky Marcia, I say. 'Most likely she'd say so herself was she to speak the truth. She never would, though. Since the day she married, she's been close-mouthed as an oyster. What she thought of Jason, or didn't think of him, she's certainly kept to herself. Nobody in this village has ever heard her bewail her lot. She made her bargain an' poor as 'twas she stuck to it."

"S'pose she'll always go on livin' there on that deserted strip of sand?" speculated Rebecca. "Why, it's 'most an island. In fact, it is an island at high tide."

"So 'tis. An' Zenas Henry says it's gettin' to be more an' more so every minute," Abbie replied. "The tide runs through that channel swift as a race horse an' each day it cuts a wider path 'twixt Marcia an' the shore. Before long, she's goin' to be as completely cut off from the mainland at low water as at high."

"It must be a terrible lonely place."

"I wouldn't want to live there," shrugged the sociable Abbie. "But there's folks that don't seem to mind solitude, an' Marcia Howe's one of 'em. Mebbe, after the life she led with Jason, she kinder relishes bein' alone. 'Twould be no marvel if she did. Furthermore, dynamite couldn't blast her out of that old Daniels Homestead. Her father an' her grandfather were born there, an' the house is the apple of her eye. It is a fine old place if only it stood somewheres else. Of course, when it was built the ocean hadn't et away the beach, an' instead of bein' narrow, the Point was a wide, sightly piece of land. Who'd 'a' foreseen the tides would wash 'round it 'til they'd whittled it down to little more'n a sand bar, an' as good as detached it from the coast altogether?"

"Who'd 'a' foreseen lots of pranks the sea's played? The Cape's a-swirl with shiftin' sands. They drift out here, they pile up there. What's terra firma today is swallered up tomorrow. Why, even Wilton Harbor's fillin' in so fast that 'fore we know it there won't be a channel deep enough to float a dory left us. We'll be land-locked."

"Well, say what you will against the sea an' the sand, they did a good turn for Marcia all them years of her married life. At least they helped her keep track of Jason. Once she got him on the Point with the tide runnin' strong 'twixt him and the village, she'd padlock the skiff an' there he'd be! She had him safe an' sound," Abbie chuckled.

"Yes," acquiesced Rebecca. "But the scheme worked both ways. Let Jason walk over to town across the flats an' then let the tide rise an' there he be, too! Without a boat there was no earthly way of his gettin' home. Marcia might fidget 'til she was black in the face. He had the best of excuses for loiterin' an' carousin' ashore."

"Well, he don't loiter and carouse here no longer. Marcia knows where he is now," declared Abbie with spirit. "I reckon she's slept more durin' these last three years than ever she slept in the ten that went before 'em. She certainly looks it. All her worries seem to have fallen away from her, leavin' her lookin' like a girl of twenty. She's pretty as a picture."

"She must be thirty-five if she's a day," Rebecca reflected.

"She ain't. She's scarce over thirty. I can tell you 'xactly when she was born," disputed the other woman. "But thirty or even more, she don't look her age."

"S'pose she'll marry again?" ventured Rebecca, leaning forward and dropping her voice.

"Marry? There you go, 'Becca, romancin' as usual."

"I ain't romancin'. I was just wonderin'. An' I ain't the only person in town askin' the question, neither," retorted Mrs. Gill with a sniff. "There's scores of others. In fact, I figger the thought is the uppermost one in the minds of 'most everybody."

Abbie laughed.

"Mebbe. In fact, I reckon 'tis," conceded she. "It's the thought that come to everyone quick as Jason was buried. 'Course, 'twouldn't be decent to own it—an' yet I don't know why. Folks 'round about here are fond of Marcia an' feel she's been cheated out of what was her rightful due. They want her to begin anew an' have what she'd oughter have had years ago—a good husband an' half a dozen children. There's nothin' to be ashamed of in a wish like that. I ain't denyin' there are certain persons who are more self-seekin'.