Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 242, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1916 — THE SEA’S GIFT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE SEA’S GIFT

By Francis Knowles

(Copyright, ISIS, by W. G. Chapman.) Jim Thorpe had been In charge of Lowestoft light for seven and twenty years. When, the young fisherman had tak-en-his young bride there he had been very proud and both very happy. Their honeymoon had lasted seven years, until the girl died. She died very suddenly, and there was no time to summon medical aid. It was not until she had been laid to rest in the churchyard of the little village that Thorpe realized that his life, too, was ended. For five years he brooded over his loss. They had never had a child. That had been their great sorrow. Thorpe was absolutely alone in the world, with nothing but his light. He tended It through the great storm of his fifth lonely year, but it did not save the great liner that was dashed to pieces on the Lowestoft rocks. In the morning Thorpe put out in the lifeboat. The ship had broken on the rocks, and there seemed to be no survivors. But on a narrow ledge of rock he found a baby girl—asleep! Hour she had escaped was a miracle. Thorpe took hfer back to the lighthouse and fed and tended her. Gradually, as thq days passed, a fierce love and jealousy for her replaced the void in his heart. She grew up in the lighthouse. Twenty years passed. * Emily Thorpe regarded herself as the keeper’s daughter. He sent her to school In the village, but she always came back at nightfall, pulling the heavy lighthouse -boat. Thorpe would watch -during those years every evening for the sight of the slender figure, running along the sands toward hhn. Then a hand would be waved, a cry of joy would come to him. and presently the big boat would lumber along, with Emily at the oar. The thought that she would some day marry and leave him was the one black, unbearable fear which he put back Into the deepest recesses of his consciousness. But Emily did not seem to care for nny of the fisherboys of the little place. Her manners were instinctively those of a lady. She was above them all; she had the inherent grace, the knowledge of one born In a high rank of life. Thorpe had tried to learn who her parents had been, but he never discovered. Every seven years, they say, a wild storm devastates the Lowestoft coast. There had been two since Emily came to Thorpe. The third happened when she was twenty-one; and again a big liner went ashore in the same place on Lowestoft rocks. Again the lifeboat was put out, this time manned by half a dozen villagers, and this time the bulk of the passengers were saved. One of them was carried, unconscious, into the lighthouse. For an hour the village doctor worked over him. “He’ll be dead long since, I think,” said the old Irishman who had brought three-fourths of the village to birth, and ushered at least one generation upon Its way Into the unknown. Just then an eyelid flickered. Emily Thorpe r kneeling beside the young man, saw the eyes gradually unclose. A week -later Ralph Rentoul was convalescent. He was a handsome young fellow of five and twenty, a surveyor, who had been sent by the government to map out some shoals along tfle treacherous shore. Emily and he were interested In each other from the first. And Thorpe, at his light in the tower, watched them stroll alpng the sands beneath him.

He had always known that sometime the girl’s hour wojild come. Now that he feared love had awakened in her heart, he was conscious of a bitterness that clouded his mind. He felt that the girl had come to him In place olUthe wife he had lost, and of -the cBIFa wfid sliould have been theirs^ It was on the third day of his convalescence that Ralph Rentoul told Emily of his love. And she listened in wonder at the unfolding of the old, yet ever new, story. - —tr l “I shall take you away with me, dearest,” he was saying. “We will have our honeymoon along the coast, while I am mapping out my work for the government. And then we shall go home.” Home! The word sounded doubtful to the girl. Home she always associated with those barren rocks, washed by the never-ceasing, resonant sea. When he spoke of a large city she could hardly understand him. “C&me', let us go and tell your father,” he said. Half an hour later, standing In the presence of Jim Thorpe, with Emily’s hand drawn through his, the young man asked simply for the hand of the girt ~ Jim Thorpe listened until the end, but his face grew darker and darker, and his lips more and more compressed. “Now you shall listen to me,” said Thorpe. “Seven and twenty years have I lived on this rock, and only for seven of them did I have chick or child of my own. Aye, and no child —only my wife that Is dead. This girl that you think mine, I tell you, and I tell her for the first time —she is nobody’s

child, washed up out of a wreck opon Lowestoft rocks." The girl started forward. “Yon are not my father?” she cried In a tremulous voice. "You are no child of mine." said Thorpe. "A waif from such a wreck as washed up this man to curse me and my hopes. Yes, and they say the sea, which sometimes gives, takes away also. So it has taken you away, has It? Well, my girl, though you are neither flesh nor blood of mine, I tell you this: Go with him and take my parting vith you. Go with him and leave me solitary, me who cared for you these years. But the time shall come when in your own loneliness you shall know the loneliness that you have left behind you. Go!” He ended speaking, and his face waa dramatic in the intensity of its passion. The young man Interposed. “You-are noLspeaking fairly, Mr. "Morpe,” he said. "It Is natural that a girl should wish to marry and leave her home and father. And the girl Is not your own flesh and blood. Let her go kindly—” •Til let her go,” scowled Thorpe. “But she takes my everlasting curse with her.” “Father!" cried Emily, running to him and laying her hands upon his arm. “I shall not go. My duty is with you." “Duty!” he sneered. “You will care a-lot_for duty when his lips are upon your own.” And he tore himself away from her and went into his light turret. The young man and the girl gazed blankly upon each other. Then the girl spoke. “You see,” she said. "You must release me from my promise, Ralph. I cannot leave him. I owe everything to him. He has the first claim upon me till he is dead.” “You have the first cfaim upon yourself, dearest,” pleaded Ralph. “Why should you be condemned to pass your whole life here on this barren rock?" But he could not persuade her. Wttlr many- tears the girl- persisted In her resolution. She would stay with the man she had come to regard as her father. She went to Jim Thorpe and told him so. But the burden on his heart was not lifted. He knew that he held her only by her sense of duty to him. Ralph was to leave .at daybreak.

At daybreak the lighthouse keeper, down to where the girl and the young man stood,” locked in each other’s arms, saying their goodby. “Go, and my blessing go with you,” he said gently. The girl swung ronnd and faced him. "Father!” she cried, “t shall stay with you—” “No, my dear,” answered Thorpe. “You were never mine. The sea gave you to me as some loan to be repaid. I shall return you to its keeping. May It carry you fairly to your home.” And he turned and left them. H« could not bear to say more. He knew that his last hold on life had gone, as the boat that carried them was going, under a fair wind, toward the mainland. He trimmed his light and filled the oil reservoir and sat'down in the turret. He looked out over the sea, over the shoals and rocks. Now that he had done the right thing, his anger had evaporated; he felt strangely peaceful. For the first time in many years he seemed to dwell in the conscious presence of His dead wife. After all, Emily could never take her place in his heart. It was Just like a dream, as all life was a dream. The day would come when he would awaken—lnto the presence of Emily. On board the boat the yonng man. and the girl sat, hand in hand, and looked back to where the lighthouse stood, only a speck In the distance, a white pillar under a red rpof. “I am uneasy,” said the girl. "1 hope nothing has happened to him. In a few weeks vve must go back and try to persuade him to give up Ms work and live with us.” ’“Yes,” said the youhg man. And then, forgetful of age.as la the way with youth, they lost themselves In their own golden dreams of happiness. The lighthouse disappeared; the last link with life had gone from Jim Thorpe's heart. But he only sat smiling beside his trimmed lamp, waiting f<Sr the night to come when it should itgive forth its beams upon the waters. But his own hand would never kindle those beams again. For he himself had passed out of the shadows into the reality.

She Always Came Back at Nightfall.