CAPE OF STORMS
A NOVEL
BY
PERCIVAL POLLARD
CHICAGO
THE ECHO
1895
"So this old mariner, Bartholomew Diaz, called thatplace the cape of torments and of storms and blessedhis Maker that he was safely gone by it. And even so,in the lives of us all, there is a Cape of Storms, thewhich to pass safely is delightful fortune, and onwhich to be wrecked is the common fate. For it oftenhappens that this Corner Dangerous holds a woman'sface." * * *
—An Unknown Author
1894
ST. JOSEPH
FRIDENAU
CHICAGO
1895
PROLOGUE
"Life is a cup that is better to sip than to drain; the taste of thedregs is very bitter in the mouth." I shall never forget those words ofour dear minister's, I suppose, because so much that has happened sincehe first uttered them to us as we sat in his Sunday-school class hasshown me the truth of them. Dick himself, I remember, was especiallyloth to believe Mr. Fairly's monition; indeed, none of us young bloodscared to think that there was anything in the life before us that wasnot altogether worth living, and when Dick spoke up plainly and quiteproudly, arguing against the pastor's words, we were all silentapprovers of his challenge. Dick was always the bravest boy in thevillage; and we had long since come to be admirers rather than rivals.But Mr. Fairly only shook his head and smiled a little—he had awonderful smile, and his eyes were always shining with kindness—andpatted Dick on the head, with a gentle, "Well, well, my boy, let us hopeso; let us hope so. Perhaps you will be fortunate above your fellows."
The incident dwells in my memory for many reasons. It was, as I havesaid, a curiously prophetic sentence of our pastor's; besides that, itwas the last Sunday that we were all together in Lincolnville, we boyswho had played, and fought and learned together. Early in the week,Dick—somehow, long after the world has come to know him only as RichardLancaster, I am still unable to think of him as anything but the "Dick"of my boyhood—was to leave the village for the world; he was going tobegin a life for himself, up there in that mysteriously magneticmaelstrom—the town. Like Dick Whittington of old, and every freshyoung blood every day of this world's life, he was going up to town toconquer. Before him lay the beautiful pathway into a glorious future;promises and pleasures were like hedges to that way that he was going totread. He was all eagerness, all hope, all ambition. And, to be just,perhaps there was never a boy went up to town from Lincolnville who hadbetter cause to be full of pleasant hopes for his future than Dick.Certainly, it was the first time the little place had evolved such atalent; and it felt a pardonable pride in the boy; it expected, perhaps,even more than he did, and was looking forward to the reflected glory ofbeing his native village.
If you have traveled through the West at all, and have anything morethan a car-window acquaintance with the great Middle West, you knowLincolnville fairly well, I think. Not that you may ever have been tothe village itself, but because it is a type of thousands of othervillages scattered throughout the country.
It is the county-seat, and is built upon the checker-board plan, with asort of hollow square in the middle, filled, as an Irishman might say,with a park. The sides of this square form the business heart of