Jupiter Lights

“When in the course—of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another—”

“Cheer!” whispered Cicely to Paul.

Paul, entering into it, set up hurrahs with so much vigor that all the people near him joined in patriotically, to the confusion of the reader, who went on, however, as well as he could:

“We hold these truths—to be self-evident, that all men are created equal—”

“Again,” murmured Cicely.

And again Paul’s corner burst forth irrepressibly, followed after a moment by the entire assemblage, glad to be doing something in a vocal way on their own account, and determined to have their money’s worth of everything, noise and all.

And so, from “the present king of Great Britain” to “our lives, our forrchuns, and our sacrred honor” on it went, a chorus of hurrahs growing louder and louder until they became roars.

“But say, did you notice the widows of our fallen heroes? They had a sort of glare under their crape. You see, once we had eight of ’em, but this year there is only one left; all the rest have married again. Now it happens that this very year the Soldiers’ Monument is done at last, and naturally the committee wanted the widows to ride in the procession. The one widow who was left declared that she would not ride all alone; she said it would look as though no one had asked her, whereas she had had at least three good offers. So the committee went to the others and asked them to dress up as former widows, just for to-day. So they did; and lots of people cried when they came along, two and two, all in black, so pathetic.” He sprang up to greet Eve, who was entering, and the foot-board entangled itself with his feet, after the peculiarly insidious fashion of extension-chairs. “Instrument of torture!” he said, grinning.

“I will leave it to you in my will,” declared Paul. “And it is just as well to say it now, before witnesses, because I am going away to-morrow.”

“To-morrow!” said Cicely.

“Only to Lakeville on business. I shall be back the day before I start south.”

“There go the last few hours!” thought Eve.

“I was at the post-office, so I thought I’d just inquire for you,” said Hollis. “There was only one letter; it’s for Miss Bruce.”

Eve took the letter and put it in her pocket. She had recognized the handwriting instantly.

Hollis, who also knew the handwriting, began to praise himself in his own mind as rapidly as he could for bringing it. “It was a good thing to do, and a kind thing; you must manage jobs like that for her often, C. Hollis. Then you’ll be sure that you ain’t, yourself, a plumb fool. She doesn’t open it? Of course she doesn’t. Sit down, and stop your jawing!”

Eve did not open her letter until she reached her own room. It was eleven o’clock; when she was safely behind her bolted door, she took it from its envelope and read it. She read it and re-read it; holding it in her hand, she pondered over it. She was standing by the mantelpiece because her lamp was there. After a while she became half conscious that the soles of her feet were aching; she bore it some time longer, still half consciously. When it was one o’clock she sat down. The letter was as follows:

“Why did he write, ‘As to seeing you again,’ and then stop? What was it that he had intended to say, and why did he leave it unfinished? ‘As to seeing you again—’ Supposing it had been, ‘As to seeing you again, I dread it!’ But no, he would never say that; he doesn’t dread anything—me least of all! Probably it was only, ‘As to seeing you again, there would be nothing gained by it; it would be for such a short time.’”

But imagination soon took flight anew. “Possibly, remembering that day in the wood, he was going to write, ‘As to seeing you again, do you wish to see me? Is it really true that you care for me a little? It was so brave to tell it! A petty spirit could never have done it.’ But no, that is not what he would have thought; he likes the other kind of women—those who do not tell.” She laid her head down upon her arms.

The evening before, sitting in the bar-room of the Star Hotel, Lakeville, Paul had written his letter. He had got as far as, “Then she needn’t see me at all, and it really would be better. As to seeing you again,” when a voice said, “Hello, Tennant!—busy?”

“Nothing important,” replied Paul, pushing back the sheet of paper.

The visitor shook hands; then he seated himself, astride, on one of the bar-room chairs, facing the wooden back, which he hugged tightly. He had come to talk about Paul’s Clay County iron; he had one or two ideas about it which he thought might come to something.

When he came in, it was late. “First mail to Port aux Pins?” he inquired.

“Five o’clock to-morrow morning,” replied the drowsy waiter.

“Must finish it to-night, then,” he thought. He took out the crumpled sheet, and, opening it, read through what he had written. “What was it I was going to add?” He tried to recall the train of thought. But he was sleepy (as Hollis said, Paul had a genius for sleep); besides, his mind was occupied by the new business plan. “I haven’t the slightest idea what I was going to say.—A clear profit of fifty thousand in four years; that isn’t bad. Ferdie will need a good deal. Ye-ough!” (a yawn). “What was it I was going to say?—I can’t imagine. Well, it couldn’t have been important, in any case. I’ll just sign it, and let it go.” So he wrote, “Yours sincerely, Paul Tennant;” and went to bed.

PAUL came back to Port aux Pins five days before the time of his departure for the South. Cicely was still there. She had refused to go to St. Paul. “The only Paul I care for is the one here. What an i-dea, Eve, that I should choose just this moment for a trip! It looks as though you were trying to keep me away from him.”

“I’m not trying; it’s Paul,” Eve might have answered.

“I am never angry with you,” Eve answered, with the humility which she always showed when Cicely made her cutting little speeches.

Paul had been right. As the time of his departure for Romney drew near, Cicely grew restless. She was seized with fits of wild weeping. At last, when there were only two days left, Paul proposed a drive—anything to change, even if only upon the surface, the current of her thoughts. “We will go to Betsy Lake, and pay a visit to the antiquities.”

The mine at Betsy Lake—the Lac aux Becs-Scies of the early Jesuit explorers—had been abandoned. Recently traces of work there in prehistoric times had been discovered, with primitive tools which excited interest in the minds of antiquarians. The citizens of Port aux Pins were not antiquarians; they said “Mound Builders;” and troubled themselves no more about it.

“We had better spend the night at the butter-woman’s,” Paul suggested. “It is too far for one day.”

Eve did not go with the party. They had started at three o’clock, intending to visit a hill from which there was an extensive view, before going on to the butter-woman’s farm-house. At four she herself went out for a solitary walk.

As she was passing a group of wretched shanties, beyond the outskirts of the town, a frightened woman came out of one of them, calling loudly, “Mrs. Halley! oh, Mrs. Halley, your Lyddy is dying!”

“That Mrs. Sullivan—she’s too sprightly,” said Mrs. Halley, after she had dismissed her frightened neighbor. “I just invited her to sit here trenquilly while I put out me clothes, when lo! she begins and screams like mad. She’s had no education, that’s plain. There’s nothing the matter with my Lyddy except that she’s delicate, and as soon as she’s a little better I’m going to have her take music lessons on the peanner.”

Eve looked at Mrs. Halley’s ragged, wet dress, and at the wan, pinched face of the sleeping girl. “It is a pity you have to leave her,” she said. “Couldn’t you get somebody to do your washing?”

“I take in washing, miss; I’m a lady-laundress. Only the best; I never wash for the boats.”

“How much do you earn a week?”

“Oh, a tidy sum,” answered Mrs. Halley. Then, seeing that Eve had taken out her purse, her misery overcame her pride, and she burst forth, suddenly: “Never more than three dollars, miss, with me slaving from morning to night. And I’ve five children besides poor Lyddy there.”

Eve gave her a five-dollar bill.

“Oh, may the Lord bless you!” she began to cry. “And me with me skirt all wet, and the house not clean, when the chariot of the Lord descended upon me!” She sank into a chair, her toil-worn hands over her face, her tired back bent forward, relaxed at last, and resting.

“She is still pretty,” Eve answered.

“Yet you never saw her making eyes at gentlemen like some; there’s a great deal of making eyes at Potterpins. Rose Bonham, now—she got a silk dress out of Mr. Tennant no longer ago as last March.”

“Mr. Tennant?”

“Yes; the gentleman who superintends the mine. Not that I have anything to say against him; gentlemen has their priviluges. All I say is—girls hasn’t!”

Eve had risen. “I must go; I will come again soon.”

“Oh, miss,” said the woman, dropping her gossip, and returning to her gratitude (which was genuine)—“oh, miss, mayn’t I know your name? I want to put it in me prayers. There was just three cents in the house, miss, when you came; and Lyddy she couldn’t eat the last meal I got for her—a cracker and a piece of mackerel.”

“You can pray for me without a name,” said Eve, going out.

And Paul himself had suggested the spending the night there—an entirely unnecessary thing—under the pretence of gaining thereby an earlier start in the morning.

She came to a little pool of clear water; pausing beside it, half unconsciously, she beheld the reflection of her face in its mirror, and something seemed to say to her, “What is your education, your culture, your senseless pride worth, when compared with the peach-like bloom of that young girl?” Her own image looked up at her, pale, cold, and stern; it did not seem to her to have a trace of beauty. She took a stone, and, casting it in the pool, shattered the picture. “I wish I were beautiful beyond words! I could be beautiful if I had everything; if nothing but the finest lace ever touched me, if I never raised my hand to do anything for myself, if I had only dainty and delicate and beautiful things about me, I should be beautiful—I know I should. Bad women have those things, they say; why haven’t they the best of it?”

When she came in sight of the low roof and scattered out-buildings a sudden realization of what she was doing came to her, and she stopped. Why was she there? If they should see her, any of them, what would they think? What could she say? As though they were already upon her, she took refuge hastily behind the high bushes with which the road was bordered. “Oh, what have I come here for? Humiliating! Let me get back home!—let me get back home!” She returned towards Port aux Pins by the fields, avoiding the road; the shadows were dense now; it was almost night.

She had gone more than a mile when she stopped. An irresistible force impelled her, and she retraced her steps. When she reached Bonham’s the second time, lights were shining from the windows. The roughly-built house rose directly from the road. Blinds and curtains were evidently considered superfluous. With breathless eagerness she drew near; the evening was cool, and the windows were closed; through the small wrinkled panes she could distinguish a wrinkled Cicely, a wrinkled judge, a Hollis much askew, and a Paul Tennant with a dislocated jaw; they were playing a game. After some moments she recognized that it was whist; she almost laughed aloud, a bitter laugh at herself; she had walked five miles to see a game of whist.

A dog barked, she turned away and began her long journey homeward.

But the thought came to her, and would not leave her. “After the game is over, and the others have gone to bed, he will see that girl somehow!”

Reaching the town at last, she passed an ephemeral ice-cream saloon with a large window; seated within, accompanied by a Port aux Pins youth of the hobbledehoy species, was Rose Bonham, eating ice-cream.

The next evening at six the excursion party returned. At seven they were seated at the tea-table. The little door-bell jangled loudly in the near hall, there was a sound of voices; Paul, who was nearest the door, rose and went to see what it was.

After a long delay he came back and looked in. They had all left the table, and Cicely had gone to her room; Paul beckoned Eve out silently. His face had a look that made her heart stop beating; in the narrow hall, under the small lamp, he gave her, one by one, three telegraphic despatches, open.

“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!”

SO, in a sweet little thread of a voice, sang Cicely; her tones, though clear, were so faint that they seemed to come from far away. She was sitting in an easy-chair, with pillows behind her, her hands laid on the arms of the chair, her feet on a footstool. Her eyes wandered over the opposite wall, and presently she began again, beating time with her hand on the arm of the chair:

“Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home;
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake—awake.”

She laughed.

The judge left the room. He walked on tiptoe; but he might have worn hobnailed shoes, and made all the noise possible—Cicely would not have noticed it. “I can’t stand it!” he said to Paul, outside.

“But it’s merciful, after all,” Paul had answered, aloud.

“Merciful?”

“Yes. Come to my room and I’ll tell you why.”

Straw was laid down before Paul’s cottage. Within, all was absolutely quiet; even little Jack had been sent away. He had been sent to Hollis, who was taking care of him so elaborately, with so many ingenious devices for his entertainment, that Porley was wildly idle; there was nothing for her to do.

Standing beside the white-pine table in Paul’s bare bedroom, the two men held their conference. Paul’s explanation lasted three minutes. “Ferdie was entangled with her long before he ever saw Cicely,” he concluded, “and he always liked her; that was her hold upon him—he liked her, and she knew it; he didn’t drop her even after he was married.”

From the rigid old face there came a hot imprecation.

“Let him alone—will you?—now he’s dead,” suggested Paul, curtly. “I don’t suppose that you yourself have been so immaculate all your life that you can afford to set up as a pattern?”

“But my wife, sir—Nothing ever touched her.”

“She won’t have time, she’s dying,” answered the grandfather.

Cicely’s state was alarming. A violent attack of brain-fever had been followed by the present condition of comparative quiet; she recognized no one; much of the time she sang to herself gayly. The doctor feared that the paroxysms would return. They had been terrible to witness; Paul had held her, and he had exerted all the force of his strong arms to keep her from injuring herself, her fragile little form had thrown itself about so wildly, like a bird beating its life out against the bars of its cage.

No one in this desolate cottage had time to think of the accumulation of troubles that had come upon them: the silence, broken only by Cicely’s strange singing, the grief of Paul for his brother, the dumb despair of the old man, the absence of little Jack, the near presence of Death. But of the four faces, that of Eve expressed the deepest hopelessness. She stayed constantly in the room where Cicely was, but she did nothing; from the first she had not offered to help in any way, and the doctor, seeing that she was to be of no use, had sent a nurse. On the fourth day, Paul said: “You must have some sleep, Eve. Go to your room; I will have you called if she grows worse.”

“Why? There is nothing for you to do.”

“You mean that I do nothing. I know it; but I must stay.”

On the seventh evening he spoke again; Cicely’s quiet state had now lasted twenty-four hours. “Lying on a lounge is no good, Eve; to-night you must go to bed. Otherwise we shall have you breaking down too.”

“Do I look as though I should break down?”

They had happened to meet in the hall outside of Cicely’s door; the sunset light, coming through a small window, flooded the place with gold.

“If you put it in that way, I must say you do not.”

“I knew it. I am very strong.”

“You speak as though you regretted it.”

“I do regret it.” She put out her hand to open the door.—“Don’t think that I am trying to be sensational,” she pleaded.

“All I think is that you are an obstinate girl; and one very much in need of rest, too.”

Her eyes filled, he had spoken as one speaks to a tired child; but she turned her head so that he should not see her face, and left him, entering Cicely’s room, and closing the door behind her; her manner and the movement, as he saw them, were distinctly repellent.

“I am a murderer, it is a murderer who is sitting here. If people only knew! But it is enough for me to know.

—“They said he was getting better. Instead of that he is dead,—he is dead, and I shot him; I lifted the pistol and fired. At the time it didn’t seem wrong. But this is what it means to kill, I suppose;—this awful agony.

—“I have never been one of the afraid kind. I wish now that I had been; then this wouldn’t have happened; the baby might have been horribly hurt, Cicely too; but at least I shouldn’t have been a murderer. For if you kill you are a murderer, no matter whether the person you kill is good or bad, or what you do it for; you have killed some one, you have made his life come to a sudden stop, and for that you must take the responsibility.

—“Oh, God! it is too dreadful! I cannot bear it. Sometimes, when I have been unhappy, I have waked and found it was only a dream; couldn’t this be a dream?

—“I was really going to tell, I was going to tell Cicely. But I thought I would wait until he was well—as every one said he would be soon—so that she wouldn’t hate me quite so much. If she should die without coming to her senses, I shouldn’t be able to tell her.

Made stupid by her misery, she sat gazing at the floor, her eyes fixed, her lips slightly apart.

She was exhausted; for the same thoughts had besieged her ever since she had read the despatch, “Morrison died this morning,”—an unending repetition of exactly the same sentences, constantly following each other, and constantly beginning again; even in sleep they continued, like a long nightmare, so that she woke weeping. And now without a moment’s respite, while she sat there with her eyes on the carpet, the involuntary recital began anew: “I am a murderer, it is a murderer who is sitting here. If people only knew!”

“They may rail at this life; from the hour I began it
I’ve found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And until you can show me some happier planet,
More social, more gay, I’ll content me with this,”

chanted Cicely, sweetly.

“The song of last Christmas at Romney,” Eve’s thoughts went on. “Oh, how changed I am since then—how changed! That night I thought only of my brother. Now I have almost forgotten him;—Jack, do you care? All I think of is Paul, Paul, Paul. How beautiful it was in that gray-green wood! But what am I dreaming about? How can the person who killed his brother be anything to him?

—“Once he said—he told me himself—‘I care for Ferdie more than for anything in the world.’ It’s Ferdie I have killed.

On the stairs she met the judge. “Is she worse?” he asked, alarmed at seeing her outside of the room.

“No; the same.”

She found Paul in the lower hall. “Is she worse?” he said.

“No. How constantly you think of her!”

“Of course.”

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” She led the way to the small back room where he had sat with his head on his arms. “I want to tell you—” she began. Then she stopped.

His face had a worn look, his eyes were dull—a dullness caused by sorrow and the pressure of care. But to her, as he stood there, he was supreme, her whole heart went out to him. “How I love him!” The feeling swept over her like a flood, overwhelming everything else.

“What is it you wish to tell me?” Paul asked, seeing that she still remained silent.

“How can I do it!—how can I do it!” she said to herself.

“Don’t tell me, then, if it troubles you,” he added, his voice taking the kindly tones she dreaded.

Her courage vanished. “Another time,” she said hurriedly, and, turning, she left the room.

MISS SABRINA’S first letters had been so full of grief that they had been vague; to her there had been but the one fact: Ferdie was dead.

She had become much attached to him. There was nothing strange in this; both as boy and as man, Ferdinand Morrison had been deeply loved by many. The poor woman knew his fault (she thought it his only one), for the judge had written an account of all that had happened, and the reasons for Cicely’s flight. Nevertheless she loved this prodigal as the prodigal is often so dearly loved by the woman whose heart is pierced the most deeply by his excesses—his mother. And Miss Sabrina, as regarded her devotion, might indeed have been Ferdie’s mother; something in him roused the dormant maternal feeling—the maternal passion—which existed in her heart unknown to herself. She did not comprehend what it was that was disturbing her so much, and yet at the same time making her so happy—she did not comprehend that it was stifled nature asserting itself at this late day; the circumstances of her life had made her a gentle, conciliatory old maid; she was not in the least aware that as a mother she could have been a tigress in the defence of her sons. For she was a woman who would have rejoiced in her sons; daughters would never have been important to her.

When his last breath had been drawn, it seemed to her as if the daily life of the world must have stopped too, outside of the darkened chamber; as if people could not go on eating and drinking, and the sun go on shining, with Ferdie dead. She was able to keep her place at the head of the household until after the funeral; then she became the prey of an illness which, though quiet and unobtrusive, like everything else connected with her, was yet sufficiently persistent to confine her to her bed. Nanny Singleton, who had come to Romney every day, rowed by Boliver, now came again, this time to stay; she took possession of the melancholy house, re-established order after her inexact fashion, and then devoted herself to nursing her friend.

Two of Nanny Singleton’s letters.

Letter number one:

Letter number two:

Eve stood at the open window of Paul’s little parlor. A figure passed in the road outside, but she did not notice it. Reappearing, it opened the gate and came in. “Many happy returns—of cooler weather! We ought to pity the Eyetalians; what must their sufferings be on such a day as this!”

Eve gazed at the speaker unseeingly. Then recognition arrived;—“Oh, Mr. Hollis.”

Hollis came into the house; he joined her in the parlor. “My best respects. Can’t help thinking of the miserable Eyetalians.” Eve made no reply. “Just heard a piece of news,” Hollis went on. “Paul has sold his Clay County iron. He would have made five times as much by holding on. But he has been so jammed lately by unexpected demands made upon him that he had no other course; all his brother’s South American speculations have come to grief, and the creditors have come down on him like a thousand of brick!”

“Will he have to pay much?” asked Eve, her lassitude gone.

“You ought to have told me. I have money.”

“I guess he wouldn’t take it. He’s had pretty hard lines all round; he wanted terribly bad to go straight to Ferdie, as soon as he heard he was shot. But Mrs. Morrison—she had come here, you know; and he had all Ferdie’s expenses to think of too, so that kept him grinding along. But he wanted awfully to go; he thought the world and all of Ferdie.”

“I know he did,” said Eve. And now her face was like a tragic mask—deadly white, with a frown, the eyes under her straight brows looking at him fixedly.

“Oh, eheu!” thought Hollis distressfully, disgustedly. “You screw yourself up to tell her all these things about him, because you think it will please her; and this is the way she takes ’em!”

He looked at her again; she gave no sign. Feeling painfully insignificant and helpless, he turned and left the room.

A few minutes later Paul came in. “You have sold your Clay County iron!” said Eve.

“I have always intended to sell it.”

“Not at a sacrifice.”

“One does as one can—a business transaction.”

“How much money have you sent to your brother all these years?”

“I don’t know that it is—I don’t know what interest you can have in it,” Paul answered.

“You mean that it is not my business. Oh, don’t be so hard! Say three words just for once.”

“And, in the meanwhile, you supported him; you have always done it.”

“You are mistaken. I advanced him money now and then when he happened to be short, but it was always for the time being only; he would have paid me back if he had lived.”

The door opened, and the judge came in. “I’m glad you’re here,” said Paul; “now we can decide, we three, upon what is best to be done. The doctor says that while this heat is very bad for Cicely, travel would be still worse; she cannot go anywhere by train, and hardly by steamer—though that is better; there would be no use, then, in trying to take her south.”

“It’s ten times hotter here to-day than I ever saw it at Romney,” interposed the judge. “It’s a tophet—this town of yours!”

“I was thinking also of Miss Abercrombie’s illness,” Paul went on. “Though her fever is light, her room is still a sick-room, and that would depress Cicely, I feel sure. But, meanwhile, the poor girl is hourly growing weaker, and so this is what I have thought of: we will go into camp in the pines near Jupiter Light. Don’t you remember how much good camp-life did her before?”

Six days later they were living in the pine woods at Jupiter. This time lodges had been built; the nurse accompanied Cicely; they were a party of eight, without counting the cook and the Indians.

Jack continued to be his mother’s most constant adorer; he climbed often into her lap, and, putting his arms round her neck, “loved” her with his cheek against hers, and with all his little heart; he came trotting up many times a day, to stroke her face with his dimpled hand. Cicely looked at him, but did not answer. After ten days in the beneficent forest, however, her strength began to revive, and their immediate fears were calmed. One evening she asked for her grandfather, and when he came hastily in and bent over her couch, she smiled and kissed him. He sat down beside her, holding her hand; after a while she fell into a sleep. The old man went softly out, he went to the camp-fire, and made it blaze, throwing on fresh pine-cones recklessly.

“Sixty-five in the shade,” remarked Hollis.

“This Northern air is always abominable. Will you make me a taste of something spicy? I feel the need of it. Miss Bruce,—Eve—Cicely knows me!”

Eve looked at his brightened face, at the blazing fire, the rough table with the tumblers, the flask, and the lemons. Hollis had gone to the kitchen to get hot water.

“She knows me,” repeated the judge, triumphantly. “She sent for me herself.”

“Hanging is too good for them,” said the judge.

“But wasn’t it supposed to be a chance shot?” remarked Hollis. “Not intentional, exactly?”

“That makes no difference. You may call it absolute chance, if you like; but the negro who dares to lift a pistol against a white man should not be left alive five minutes afterwards,” declared the old planter, implacably.

“You’d ought to have lived in the days of religious wars,” drawled Hollis. “I don’t know anything else carnivorous enough to suit you.”

“You must be a Quaker, sir! Tennant feels as I do, he’d shoot at sight.”

“Oh no, he wouldn’t,” said Hollis. “He ain’t a Southerner.”

“Tennant can speak for himself,” said the judge, confidently.

“I’d shoot the man who shot my brother,” answered Paul. “I’d go down there to-morrow—I should have gone long ago—if I thought there was the least chance of finding him.” A dark flush rose in his face. “I’m afraid—even if it was an unintentional shot—that I should want to kill that man just the same; I should be a regular savage!”

“Would you never forgive him?” asked Eve’s voice from the shadow.

“Blood for blood!” responded Paul, hotly. “No, not unless I killed him; then I might.”

Paul got up. “Oh, are you going?” But she did not hear him; she had gone to her lodge. He sat down again. She did not reappear that night.

The next morning she went off for a solitary walk. By chance her steps took the direction of a small promontory that jutted sharply into the lake, its perpendicular face rising to a height of forty feet from the deep water below; she had been here several times before, and knew the place well; it was about a mile from the camp. As she sat there, Paul’s figure appeared through the trees. He came straight to her. “I have been looking for you, I tried to find you last night.” He paused a moment. “Eve, don’t you see what I’ve come for? Right in the midst of all this grief and trouble I’ve found out something. It’s just this, Eve: I love you.”

She tried to rise, but he put his hand on her shoulder to keep her where she was. “Oh, but I do, you needn’t doubt it,” he went on, with an amused smile—amused at himself; “in some way or other the thing has come about, I may say, in spite of me. I never thought it would. But here ’tis—with a vengeance! I think of you constantly, I can’t help thinking of you; I recognize, at last, that the thing is unchangeable, that it’s for life; have you I must.” The words were despotic, but the tone was entreating; and the eyes, looking down upon her, were caressing—imploring. “Yes, I’m as helpless as any one,” Paul went on, smiling as he said it; “I can’t sleep, even. Come, take me; I’m not such a bad fellow, after all—I really think I’m not. And as regards my feeling for you, you need not be troubled; it’s strong enough!”

“I haven’t spoken before because there has been so much to do,” Paul continued; “there has been Cicely, and then I’ve been harassed about business; I’ve been in a box, and trying to get out. Besides, I wasn’t perfectly sure that my time had come.” He laughed. “I’m sure now.” He took her in his arms. “Don’t let us make any delays, Eve; we’re not so young, either of us. Not that you need be afraid that you’re to be the less happy on that account; I’ll see to that!”

She broke from him.

But again he came to her, he took her hands, and, kneeling, laid his forehead upon them. “I will be as humble as you like; only—be good to me. I long for it, I must have it.”

A sob rose in her throat. He sprang up. “Don’t do that! Why, I want to make you absolutely happy, if I can. We shall have troubles enough, and perhaps we shall have sorrows, but at least we shall be together; you must never leave me, and I will do all I can to be less rough. But on your side there’s one thing, Eve: you must love me.” These last words were murmured in her ear.

She drew herself away from him. The expression of her face was almost like death.

“You look as though you were afraid of me! I thought you loved me, Eve?”

“I do.”

“Pretend you are a man, then, long enough to say ‘yes’ without any more circumlocution. We will be married at Port aux Pins. Then we can take care of Cicely together.”

“I shall never marry.”

“I do not wish to leave Cicely.”

“She wouldn’t care about that. She isn’t even fond of you.”

“Oh, what shall I say to you?” cried Eve, her hands dropping by her sides. “Listen: it will be absolutely impossible for you to change my determination. But I am so horribly unhappy that I do believe I cannot stand anything more—any more contests with you. Leave me to myself; say nothing to me. But don’t drive me away; at least let me stay near you.”

“In my arms, Eve.”

“Let me stay near you; see you; hear you talk; but that is all.”

“And how long do you suppose that could last? It’s a regular woman’s idea: nonsense.”

“Paul, be merciful!”

“Merciful? Oh, yes!” He took her again in his arms.

“I swear to you that I cannot marry you,” she said, trembling as his cheek touched hers. “Since I’ve known you I haven’t wanted to die, I’ve wanted to live—live a long life. But now I do want to die; there is a barrier between us, I cannot lift it.”

He released her. “There could be but one.—I believe that you are truthful; is the barrier another man?”

Another man? She hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

He looked at her. “I don’t believe you! You are lying for some purpose of your own. See here, Eve, I don’t want to be played with in this way; you love me, and I worship you; by this time next week you are to be my wife.”

He followed her. He had paid no attention to what she was saying; “feminine complications”—this was all he thought. He was very masterful with women.

As he came up she turned her head and looked at him. And, by a sort of inspiration, he divined that the look was a farewell. He caught her, and none too soon, for, as he touched her, he felt the impulse, the first forward movement of the spring which would have taken her over the edge, down to the deep water below.

Carrying her in his arms, close against his breast, he hastened away from the edge; he went inland for a long distance. Then he stopped, releasing her. He was extremely pale.

“I believe you now,” he said. “All shall be as you like—just as you like; I will do anything you wish me to do.” He seemed to be still afraid, he watched her anxiously.

She came and put her hands on his shoulders; she lifted her head and kissed his cheek. It was like the kiss one gives in the chamber of death.

He did not move, he was holding himself in strict control. But he felt the misery of her greeting so acutely that moisture rose in his eyes.

“I’m not a woman, you know,” said Paul, with a faint smile. “Women do with make-believes; men can’t.”

She had left him. “Go now,” she said.

He turned to obey. Then he came back. “Eve, can’t you tell me your real reason?”

But her face changed so quickly to its old look of agony that he felt a pang of regret that he had spoken. “I will never ask you again,” he said.

This was the offering he made her—a great one for Paul Tennant. He went away.

An hour later she came back to the camp.

“Paul has gone to Potterpins,” said Hollis, who was sitting by the fire. “Told me to give you this.” He handed her a note.

It contained but two lines: “I shall come back next week. But send a note by mail; I want to know if you are contented with me.”

Eve wrote but one word—“Yes.”

PAUL remained away for ten days; not by his own wish, but detained by business.

On the eleventh day Paul returned.

“I guess I’ll go down to the lake for a moment or two,” Hollis said to the judge, who was sitting by the fire. He walked away in the direction of the lake; then, doubling upon his track, he returned, avoiding the fire and going towards the row of lodges. Presently he saw two dusky figures, a man and a woman; they stood there for a moment; then the man bent his head and touched with his lips the woman’s wrist. It was but for a second; they separated, she going towards her lodge, and he returning to the fire. The watcher in the wood stole noiselessly down to the beach and got out a canoe; then he went off and woke an Indian. Presently the two were paddling westward over the dark lake. They caught the steamer. Hollis reached Port aux Pins the following evening.

From the boat he went to a restaurant and ordered dinner; he called it “dinner” to make it appear more fine. He ordered the best that the establishment could offer. He complained because there were no anchovies. He said to the waiter: “This patty de fograr?—You must be sick! Take away these off-color peaches and bring me something first class. Bring lick-koors, too; can you catch on to that?” He drank a great deal of wine, finishing with champagne; then he lit a cigar and sauntered out.

“Hello, Katty, wie geht’s?” said Hollis to a girl who was passing with a tray of empty beer-glasses. She stopped. “Want some ice-cream, Katty?”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Hollis, you know there’s no ice-cream here.”

“Did I say here? Outside, of course. Come along.”

Katty went, nothing loath.

She was a girl of sixteen, with bright eyes, thick braids of brown hair, and a sweet voice; the fairness of extreme youth gave her a fictitious innocence. He took her to the ephemeral saloon, and sat looking at her while she devoured two large slabs of a violently pink tint; her preposterous Gainsborough hat, with its imitation plumes, she had taken off, and the flaring gas-light shone on her pretty face.

“Now shall we have a walk, Katty?”

They strolled through the streets for half an hour. He took her into a jeweller’s shop, and bought her a German-silver dog-collar which she had admired in the window; she wanted it to clasp round her throat: “Close up, you know, under the chin; it’s so cute that way.” She was profuse in her thanks; of her own accord, when they came out, she took his arm.

He fell into silence. They passed his rooms; Katty looked up. “All dark,” she said.

“Yes. I guess I’ll take you back now, Katty; do you want to go home, or to the garden again?”

“I ain’t accustomed to going to bed at this early hour, Mr. Hollis, whatever you may be. I’ll go back to the gardens, please.”

“Oh, Mr. Hollis,—when I like you better than many that’s young.”

“Thank you, Katty. Good-night.”

He went, as he would have called it, “home.” On the way he passed his office; a vague impulse made him unlock the door, and look in, by the light of a match. The skeleton was there, and the bonnets in their bandboxes. “I must try to work ’em off before winter,” he thought; “they are really elegant.” He locked the door again, and, going a little farther down the street, he entered an open hallway, and began to climb a long flight of stairs. On the second floor he inserted his key in a door, and, opening, entered; he was at home. The air was close and hot, and he threw up the windows; leaving the candle in the outer room, he went and sat down in his parlor, crossing his legs, and trying to lean back; every chair in the room was in its very nature and shape uncomfortable. Sitting there, his life in retrospect passed slowly before him, like a picture unrolling itself on the dark wall; he saw all the squalid poverty of it, all its disappointments, its deprivations. “From first to last it’s been a poor affair; I wonder how I’ve stood it!” The dawn came into the room, he did not move; he sat there with his hat on until the little bell of the Baptist church near by began to ring for Sabbath-school. He listened to the sound for a while, it was persistent; finally he got up; his legs felt stiff, he brushed some dust from his trousers with the palm of his hand; then he went out.

“The voice of free grace cries escape to the mount-ins—”

His mother used to sing that song, he remembered. She often sang it over her work, and she was always at work—yes, to the very day of her death; she was a patient, silent creature.

“I don’t know that I’d oughter have less pluck than she had,” thought her son.

“Brother, will you have a book?” whispered a little man in a duster, proffering one from behind.

Hollis took it, and followed the words as the children sang them to the end. When the prayer began, he laid the book down carefully on the seat, and went out on tiptoe. He went down to the pier; the westward bound boat had just come in; he went on board.

“Business,” he explained to the judge, when he reached the camp. “Had to go.”

“Sold the skeleton, perhaps?”

“Well, I’ve laid one!” responded Hollis, grimly.

The judge was in gay spirits, Cicely had been talking to him; it had been about Jack, and she had said nothing of importance; but the sentences had been rational, connected.

“Paul Tennant, are you there?” asked a voice.

Startled, they turned. On the bank above the beach, and therefore just above their heads (the bank was eight feet high), stood Cicely.

“It is you I want, Paul Tennant. Everything has come back to me; I know now that Ferdie is dead. You would not let me go to him; probably he thought that it was because I did not want to go. This I owe to you, and I curse you for it. I curse you, Paul Tennant, I curse your days and nights; all the things and people you like, all your hopes and plans. If you trust any one, I hope that person will betray you; if you love any one, I hope that person will hate you; if you should have any children, I hope they will be disobedient, and, whatever they may be to others, undutiful to you.”

“God, curse Paul Tennant. He has been so cruel!” She was now kneeling down, her arms held up to heaven in appeal.