[5] Our lives are like the ever shifting sands Which ocean currents whirl in the ebb and flow Of their unresisting tides [7] [7] Chapter I The Widder lived on the spit of sand jutting out into Crocker's Cove. The Widder 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[8] 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?" [8] "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'
Prev.
Back
Top