The judge looked waxily pallid; Hollis did not move; Paul, much less disturbed than any one, was already climbing the bank. It was perpendicular, and there was neither footing nor hold, but after one or two efforts he succeeded. When he reached the top, however, Cicely was gone. He went to her lodge; here he found her sitting quietly beside Jack’s bed; she was alone, neither the nurse nor Porley was with her. Before he could speak, Eve appeared, breathless.
“Where is the nurse, Cicely?” Paul asked, in his usual tone.
“Do you mean that woman whom you have put over me? She has gone for a walk.”
“And Porley?”
“You will find Porley at the big pine.”
“What is she doing there?”
“I didn’t want her about, so I tied her to the trunk,” Cicely answered. “Probably she is frightened,” she added, calmly.
“Go and find her,” said Eve to Paul. “I will stay here.”
“Have nothing to do with Paul Tennant, Eve,” Cicely remarked. “He is almost a murderer. He didn’t go to his brother; he let him die alone.”
“I shall not leave you,” said Paul, looking at Eve’s white cheeks.
“Have you fallen in love with each other?” asked Cicely. “It needed only that.”
“I beg you to go,” Eve entreated.
Paul hesitated. “Will you promise not to leave this lodge until I come back?”
“Yes.”
Paul went out. As he did so, he saw the judge approaching, leaning heavily on Hollis’s arm.
“It’s nothing,” Hollis explained. “The judge, he’s only tuckered out; a night’s rest is all he needs.”
“Take me to Cicely,” the judge commanded.
“Cicely ought to be quiet now,” Paul answered in a decided voice. “Eve is with her, and they’re all right; women do better alone together, you know, when one of them has hysteria.”
“Hysteria! Is that what you called it?” said the judge.
“Of course. And it’s natural,” Paul went on:—“poor little girl, coming to herself suddenly here in the woods, only to realize that her husband is dead. We shall have to be doubly tender with her, now that she is beginning to be herself again.”
“You didn’t mind it, then?” pursued the judge. He was relieved, of course—glad. Still it began to seem almost an impertinence that Paul should have paid so little attention to what had been to the rest of them so terrible.
“Mind? Do you mean what she was saying? I didn’t half hear it, I was thinking how I could get up that bank. And that reminds me there’s something wrong with Porley; she’s at the big pine. I am going out there to see. Cicely told me that she had tied her in some way.”
“If she did, the wench richly deserved it,” said the judge, going towards his lodge, his step stiff and slow.
“He came mighty near a stroke,” said Hollis to Paul in an undertone.
“Hadn’t you better go with him, then?”
“Oh yes; I’ll go.” He went towards the judge’s lodge. “You go right into that lodge, fool Hollis, and stay there,—stay with that unreasonable, vituperative, cantankerous old Bourbon of a judge, and—judge of Bourbon! You smooth him down, and you hearten him up, you agree with him every time; you tuck him in, you hang his old clothes over a chair, you take his shoes out, and black ’em; and you conduct yourself generally like one of his own nigs in the glorious old days of slavery—Maryland, my Maryland!” He lifted the latch of the door, and went in.
Paul, meanwhile, had gone to the big pine; when he reached it, the twilight had darkened into night. A crouching figure stood close to the trunk—Porley; she was tied by a small rope to the tree, the firm ligatures encircling her in three places—at the throat, the waist, and the ankles; in addition, her hands were tied behind her.
“Well, Porley, a good joke, isn’t it?” Paul said, as he cut the knots of the rope with his knife.
“Ah-hoo!” sobbed the girl, her fright breaking into audible expression now that aid was near.
“Mrs. Morrison thought she would see how brave you were.”
“Ah-hoo! Ah-hoo-hoo-hoo!” roared Porley, in a paroxysm of frantic weeping.
“If you are so frightened as that, what did you let her do it for? You are five times as strong as she is.”
“I coulden tech her, marse—I coulden! Says she, ‘A-follerin’ an’ spyin’, Porley? Take dat rope an’ come wid me. ’ So I come. She’s cunjud me, marse; I is done fer.”
“Nonsense! Where’s the nurse?”
“I doan know—I doan know. Says she, ‘We’ll take a walk, Miss Mile.’ An’ off dey went, ’way ober dat way. Reckon Miss Mile’s dead!”
“No more dead than you are. Go back to the camp and un-cunjer yourself; there’s a dollar to help it along.”
He went off in the direction she had indicated. After a while he began to call at intervals; there was a distant answer, and he called again. And then gradually, nearer and nearer, came the self-respecting voice of Mary Ann Mile. Each time he shouted, “Hello there!” her answer was, “Yes, sir; present-lée,” in a very well-educated tone.
“What is this, Mrs. Mile?”
“You may well ask, sir. Such an incident has never happened to me before. Mrs. Morrison remarked that she should enjoy a walk, and I therefore went with her; after we had proceeded some distance, suddenly she darted off. I followed her, and kept her in sight for a while, or rather she kept me in sight; then she disappeared, and I perceived not only that I had lost her, but that I myself was lost. It is a curious thing, sir,—the cleverness of people whose minds are disordered!”
“Her mind is no longer disordered, Mrs. Mile; she has got back her senses.”
“Do you consider this an instance of it?” asked the nurse, doubtfully.
When Paul left Cicely’s lodge, Eve closed the door. “Cicely, I have something to tell you. Listen.”
“It is a pity you like that man—that Paul Tennant,” Cicely answered.
“If I do like him, I can never be anything to him. This is what I wanted to tell you: that I shot his brother.”
“Well, if his brother was like him—”
“Oh, Cicely, it was Ferdie—your Ferdie.”
“What do you know about Ferdie?” demanded Cicely, coldly. “He never liked you in the least.”
“Don’t you know, Cicely, that Ferdie is dead?”
“Oh, yes, I know it. Paul would not let me go to him, and he died all alone.”
“And do you know what was the cause of his death?”
“Yes; he was shot; there were some negroes, they got away in a boat.”
“No, there were no negroes; I shot him. I took a pistol on purpose.”
“It seems to be very hard work for you to tell me this, you are crying dreadfully,” remarked Cicely, looking at her. “Why do you tell?”
“Because I am the one you must curse. Not Paul.”
“It’s all for Paul, then.”
“But it was for you in the first place, Cicely. Don’t you remember that we escaped?—that we went through the wood to the north point?—that you tried to push the boat off, and couldn’t? Baby climbed up by one of the seats, and Ferdie saw him, and made a dash after him; then it was that I fired. I did it, Cicely. Nobody else.”
“Oh,” said Cicely, slowly, “you did it, did you?” She rose. “And Paul kept me from going to him! It was all you two.” She went to the crib, and lifted Jack from his nest. He stirred drowsily; then fell asleep again. (Poor little Jack, what journeys!)
“Open that door; and go,” Cicely commanded.
Eve hesitated a moment. Then she obeyed.
Cicely wrapped a shawl about Jack, and laid him down; she set to work and made two packets of clothing—one for herself, and one for the child—slinging them upon her arm; she put on her straw hat, took Jack, and went out, closing the door behind her. Eve, who was waiting outside in the darkness, followed her. She dared not call for help; she hoped that they might meet Paul coming back, or Porley, or the nurse. But they met no one, Paul was still at the big pine. Cicely turned down to the beach, and began to walk westward. Eve followed, moving as noiselessly as possible; but Cicely must have heard her, though she gave no sign of it, for, upon passing a point, Eve found that she had lost her, there was no one in sight. She ran forward, she called her name entreatingly; she stood by the edge of the water, fearing to see something dark floating there. She called again, she pleaded. No answer from the dusky night. She turned and ran back to the camp.
At its edge she met Paul. “You promised me that you would not leave the lodge,” he said.
“Oh, Paul, I don’t know where she is. Oh, come—hurry, hurry!”
They went together. She was so tired, so breathless, that he put his arm round her as a support.
“Oh, do not.”
“This is where you ought always to be when you are tired—in my arms.”
“Don’t let us talk. She may be dead.”
“Poor little Cicely! But you are more to me.”
His tones thrilled her, she felt faint with happiness. Suddenly came the thought: “When we find her, she will tell him! She will tell him all I said.”
“Don’t believe her; don’t believe anything she may tell you,” she entreated, passionately. A fierce feeling took possession of her; she would fight for her happiness. “Am I nothing to you?” she said, pausing; “my wish nothing? Promise me not to believe anything Cicely says against me,—anything! It’s all an hallucination.”
Paul had not paid much heed to her exclamations, he thought all women incoherent; but he perceived that she was excited, exhausted, and he laid his hand protectingly on her hair, smoothing it with tender touch. “Why should I mind what she says? It would be impossible for her to say anything that could injure you in my eyes, Eve.”
Beyond the next point they saw a light; it came from a little fire of twigs on the beach. Beside the fire was Jack; he was carefully wrapped in the shawl, the two poor little packets of clothing were arranged under him as a bed; Cicely’s straw hat was under his head, and her handkerchief covered his feet. But there was no Cicely. They went up and down the beach, and into the wood behind; again Eve looked fearfully at the water.
“She isn’t far from Jack,” said Paul. “We shall find her in a moment or two.”
Eve’s search stopped. “In a moment or two he will know!”
“Here she is!” cried Paul.
And there was Cicely, sitting close under the bank in the deepest shadow. She did not move; Paul lifted her in his arms.
“The moon is under a cloud now,” she explained, in a whispering voice; “as soon as it comes out, I shall see Ferdie over there on the opposite shore, and I shall call to him. “Don’t let that fire go out, I haven’t another match; he will need the light as a guide.”
“She thinks she is on Singleton Island!” said Eve;—“the night we got away.”
Her tone was joyous.
XXVI.
PAUL AND EVE took Cicely back to the camp. And almost immediately, before Mrs. Mile could undress her, she had fallen asleep. It was the still slumber of exhaustion, but it seemed also to be a rest; she lay without moving all that night, and the next day, and the night following. As she slumbered, gradually the tenseness of her face was relaxed, the lines grew lighter, disappeared; then slowly a pink colored her cheeks, restoring her beauty.
They all came softly in from time to time to stand beside her for a moment. The nurse was sure that the sleep was nature’s medicine, and that it was remedial; and when at last, on the second day, the dark eyes opened, it could be seen that physically the poor child was well.
She laughed with Jack, she greeted her grandfather, and talked to him; she called Porley “Dilsey,” and told her that she was much improved. “I will give you a pair of silver ear-rings, Dilsey, when we get home.” For she seemed to comprehend that they were not at home, but on a journey of some sort. The memory of everything that had happened since Ferdie’s arrival at Romney had been taken from her; she spoke of her husband as in South America. But she did not talk long on any subject. She wished to have Jack always with her, she felt a tranquil interest in her grandfather, and this was all. With the others she was distant. Her manner to Eve was exactly the manner of those first weeks after Eve’s arrival at Romney. She spoke of Paul and Hollis to her grandfather as “your friends.”
She gathered flowers; she talked to the Indians, who looked at her with awe; she wandered up and down the beach, singing little songs, and she spent hours afloat. Mrs. Mile, who, like the well-trained nurse that she was, had no likes or dislikes as regarded her patients, and who therefore cherished no resentment as to the manner in which she had been befooled in the forest—Mrs. Mile thoroughly enjoyed “turning out” her charge each morning in a better condition than that of the day before. Cicely went willingly to bed at eight every evening, and she did not wake until eight the next morning; when she came out of her lodge after the bath, the careful rubbing, and the nourishing breakfast which formed part of Mrs. Mile’s excellent system, from the crisp edges of her hair down to her quick-stepping little feet, she looked high-spirited, high-bred, and fresh as an opening rose. Mrs. Mile would follow, bringing her straw hat, her satisfaction expressed by a tightening of her long upper lip that seemed preliminary to a smile (though the smile never came), and by the quiet pride visible in her well-poised back. When, as generally happened, Cicely went out on the lake, Mrs. Mile, after over-seeing with her own eyes the preparations for lunch, would retire to a certain bench, whence she could watch for the returning boats, and devote herself to literature for a while, always reading one book, the History of Windham, Connecticut, Windham being her native place. As she sat there, with her plain broad-cheeked face and smooth scanty hair, her stiff white cuffs, her neat boots, size number seven, neatly crossed before the short skirt of her brown gown, she made a picture of a sensible, useful person (without one grain of what a man would call feminine attractiveness). But no one cared to have her attractive at Jupiter Light; they were grateful for her devotion to Cicely, and did not study her features. They all clustered round Cicely more constantly than ever now, this strange little companion, so fair and fresh, so happily unconscious, by God’s act, of the sorrows that had crushed her.
Paul was back and forth, now at the camp for a day or two, now at Port aux Pins. One afternoon, when he was absent, Eve went to the little forest burying-ground belonging to Jupiter Light. On the way she met Cicely, accompanied by Mrs. Mile.
“Where are you going? I will go with you, I think,” Cicely remarked. “It can’t be so tiresome as this.”
Mrs. Mile went intelligently away.
“I am very tired of her,” Cicely continued; “she looks like the Mad Hatter at the tea-party: this style ten-and-six. Why are you turning off?”
“This path is prettier.”
“No; I want to go where you were going first.”
“Perhaps she won’t mind,” thought Eve.
When they came to the little enclosure, Cicely looked at it calmly. “Is this a garden?” she asked. She began to gather wild flowers outside. Eve went within; she cleared the fallen leaves from the grave of the little girl. While she was thus occupied, steps came up the path, and Hollis appeared; making a sign to Eve, he offered his arm quickly to Cicely. “Mrs. Morrison, the judge is in a great hurry to have you come back.”
“Grandpa?” said Cicely. “Is he ill?”
“Yes, he is very ill indeed,” replied Hollis, decidedly.
“Poor grandpa!” said Cicely. “Let us hurry.”
They went back to the camp. Reaching it, he took her with rapid step to her lodge, where the judge and Mrs. Mile were waiting. “You are ill, grandpa?” said Cicely, going to him.
“I am already better.”
“But not by any means well yet,” interposed Mrs. Mile; “he must stay here in this lodge, and you shouldn’t leave him for one moment, Mrs. Morrison.”
Porley and Jack were also present; every now and then Mrs. Mile would give Porley a peremptory sign.
Hollis and Eve stood together near the door talking in low tones. “A muss among the Indians,” Hollis explained. “Those we brought along are peaceful enough if left to themselves; in fact, they are cowards. But a dangerous fellow, a very dangerous scamp, joined them this morning on the sly, and they’ve got hold of some whiskey; I guess he brought it. I thought I’d better tell you; the cook is staying with them to keep watch, and the judge and I are on the lookout here; I don’t think there is the least real danger; still you’d better keep under cover. If Paul comes, we shall be all right.”
“Do you expect him to-day?”
A drunken shout sounded through the forest.
“An Indian spree is worse than a white man’s,” remarked Hollis. “But you ain’t afraid, I see that!” He looked at her admiringly.
“I’m only afraid of one thing in the world,” replied Eve, taking, woman-like, the comfort of a confession which no one could understand.
“Can you shoot?” Hollis went on.—“Fire a pistol?”
She blanched.
“There, now, never mind. ’Twas only a chance question.”
“No, tell me. I can shoot perfectly well; as well as a man.”
“Then I’ll give you my pistol. You’ll have no occasion to use it, not the least in the world; but still you’ll be armed.”
“Put it on the table. I can get it if necessary.”
“Well, I’ll go outside. I’m to stroll about where I can see the cook; that’s my cue; and you can stay near the door, where you can see me; that’s yours. And the judge, he has the back window, one of the guns is there. All right? Bon-sor, then.” He went out.
Eve sat down by the door. The judge kept up a conversation with Cicely, and anxiously played quiet games with little Jack, until both fell asleep; Cicely fell asleep very easily now, like a child. Mrs. Mile lifted her in her strong arms and laid her on the bed, while Porley took Jack; poor Porley was terribly frightened, but rather more afraid of Mrs. Mile, on the whole, than of the savages.
By-and-by a red light flashed through the trees outside; the Indians had kindled a fire.
Twenty minutes later Hollis paused at the door. “Paul’s coming, I guess; I hear paddles.”
“Of course you’ll go down and meet him?” said Eve.
“No, I can’t leave the beat.”
“I can take your place for that short time.”
“Don’t you show your head outside—don’t you!” said Hollis, quickly.
Eve looked at him. “I shall go down to the beach myself, if you don’t.” Her eyes were inflexible.
All Hollis’s determination left him. “The judge can take this beat, then; you can guard his window,” he said, in a lifeless tone. He went down to the beach.
All of them—the judge, Mrs. Mile, and Porley, as well as Eve—could hear the paddles now; the night, save for the occasional shouts, was very still. Eve stood at the window. “Will the Indians hear him, and go down?”
But they did not hear him. In another five minutes Paul had joined them.
Hollis, who was with him, gave a hurried explanation. “We’re all right, now that you are here,” he concluded; “we are more than a match for the drunken scamps if they should come prowling up this way. When the whiskey’s out of ’em to-morrow, we can reduce ’em to reason.”
“Why wait till to-morrow?” said Paul.
“No use getting into a fight unnecessarily.”
“I don’t propose to fight,” Paul answered.
“They’re eleven, Tennant,” said the judge; “you wouldn’t have time to shoot them all down.”
“I’m not going to shoot,” Paul responded. He went towards the door.
“Don’t go,” pleaded Eve, interposing.
He went straight on, as though he had not heard her.
“I can’t move him,” she thought, triumphantly. “I can no more move him than I could move a mountain!”
Paul was gone. Hollis followed him to the door. “We two must stay here and protect the women, you know,” said the judge, warningly.
“Why, certainly,” said Hollis; “of course,—the ladies.” He came back.
Suddenly Eve hurried out.
Paul reached the Indian quarters, and walked up to the fire. He gave a look round the circle.
The newly arrived man, the one whom Hollis had called dangerous, sprang to his feet.
Paul took him by the throat and shook the breath out of him.
When Hollis came hurrying up, the thing was done; the other Indians, abject and terrified, were helping to bind the interloper.
“The cook can watch them now,” said Paul. “I suppose there’s no supper, with all this row?”
Hollis gave a grim laugh. “At a pinch—like this, I don’t mind cooking one.”
Paul turned. And then he saw Eve behind him.
Hollis had gone to the kitchen; he did not wish to see them meet.
“You did absurdly wrong to come, Eve,” said Paul, going to her. “What possible good was it? And if there had been real danger, you would have been in the way.”
“You are trembling; are you so frightened, then?” he went on, his voice growing softer.
“I am not frightened now.”
They went towards the lodge.
“It’s a desolate life you’ve arranged for me, Eve,” he said, going back to his subject, the Indians already forgotten. “I’m not to say anything to you; I’m to have nothing; and so we’re to go on apparently forever. What is it you are planning for? I am sure I don’t know. I know you care for me, and I don’t believe that you’ll find anything sweeter than the love I could give you,—if you would let me.”
“There is nothing sweeter,” Eve answered.
“Have you given up keeping me off?” He drew her towards him. She did not resist.
In her heart rose the cry, “For one day, for one hour, let me have it, have it all! Then—”
XXVII.
ON the second day after the alarm, Paul took the Indians back to Port aux Pins, and dismissed them, after handing the ringleader to the proper authorities; the others slunk away with their long black hair hanging down below their white man’s hats, their eagle profiles, in spite of fierceness of outline, entirely unalarming. Paul then selected half a dozen Irishmen, the least dilapidated he could find (the choice lay between Indians and Irishmen), and brought them to Jupiter Light to take the place of the crestfallen aborigines. He remained there a few days to see that all went well; then he returned to Port aux Pins for a week’s stay. “Come a little way up the lake to meet me,” he said to Eve, as he bade her good-by; “I shall be along about four o’clock next Wednesday afternoon.”
His manner still remained a little despotic. But to women of strong will despotism is attractive; when a despotism of love, it is enchanting. Eve’s feeling was, “Oh, to have at last found some one who is stronger than I!”
Even now not for a moment did she bend her opinions, her decisions, to his, of her own accord; each time it was simply that she was conquered; after contesting the point as strongly as she could, how she gloried in feeling herself overridden at last! She would look at Paul with delighted eyes, and laugh in triumph. To have yielded because she loved him, would have had a certain sweetness; but to be conquered unyielding, that was a satisfaction whose intensity could go no further.
Since that walk in the darkness from the Indian quarters to Cicely’s lodge, when, suddenly, she had let her love have its way, she had allowed herself to be carried along by chance events whithersoever they pleased; she had defied conscience, she had accepted the bliss that hung temptingly before her; she did not think, she only enjoyed. Once or twice she had sent forth mentally this defiance,—“If you feel as I do, then you may judge me!” To whom was this said? To Fate? To the world at large? In reality it was said to all women who in that summer of 1869 were young enough to love: “If you can feel as I do, then you may judge me.” But it was only once or twice that this mood had come to her, only once or twice that she thought of anything but Paul; his offered hand taken, her acceptance of it was at least superb in its completeness; there was no looking back, no fear, no regret; nothing but the fulness of joy.
Still sweeter was it to feel that, deeply as she loved, she was loved as deeply. Paul might be imperious, he might be negligent in explaining things, and in other small ways; but there was nothing negligent in his passion. His genius for directness, which puzzled Hollis in other matters, showed itself also here; he had little to say—that was possible—but no woman could have misunderstood the language of his eyes or of the touch of his hand; or fail to be thrilled by it. The feeling that possessed him went straight to its end, namely, Eve Bruce for his wife; the same Eve whom he had not liked at all at first; to whom he had found it difficult only a few weeks before to write a short letter. This inconsistency did not trouble him; love had arrived, had descended upon him in some way, he knew not how, had taken possession of him by force and forever—he recognized that, and did not contest it. Women are only women: this had been one of the settled convictions in the depths of his mind, and it was a conviction not much changed even now; yet this same Paul, with his mediæval creed, made a lover much more invincible than a hundred, a thousand other men, who would have said, perhaps, that they revered women more. “Revered?” Paul would have answered, “I don’t revere Eve, I love her!”
Whatever name he gave it, she knew that she held the joy of his life in her hands, that he would come to her for this—had already come; and that it always would be so. This was happiness enough for her.
This happiness had existed but ten days. But these days had seemed like months of joy, she had lived each moment so fully. “Sejed, Prince of Ethiopia, vowed to have three days of uninterrupted happiness—” she might have remembered the old fable and its ending. But she remembered nothing, she scorned to remember; let the unhappy, the unloved, think of the past; she would drink in all the sunshine of the present, she would live, live!
“Row a little way up the lake to meet me,” Paul had said. At half-past three of the afternoon he had indicated, she went to the beach; one of the Irishmen, under her direction, began to push down a canoe. The open way in which she did this—in which she had done everything since that night—was in itself an effectual disguise; no one thought it remarkable that she should be going to meet Paul. As she was about to take her place in the canoe, Hollis appeared.
“Going far? We don’t know much about that Paddy,” he said, in an undertone.
“Only to meet Paul.”
“If he’s late, you may have to go a good way.”
“He won’t be late.”
“Well, he may be,” answered Hollis, patiently. “I guess I’ll take you, if you’ll let me; and then, when we meet, I’ll come back with his man in the other canoe.”
“Very well,” Eve responded. She did not comment upon the terms of his offer, she did not care what he thought. She took her place, and he paddled westward.
It was a beautiful afternoon; a slight coolness, which made itself felt through the sunshine, showed that the short Northern summer was approaching its end. As she sat with her back to the prow, she was obliged to turn her head to look for the other canoe; and this she did many times. After one of these quests, she saw that Hollis’s eyes were upon her.
“Is there any change in me?” she asked, laughing.
“Rather!”
“What is it?”
But poor Hollis did not know how to say, “You are so much more beautiful.”
“It’s my white dress,” Eve suggested, in a somewhat troubled voice. “I had it made in Port aux Pins. It’s only piqué.” She smoothed the folds of the skirt for a moment, doubtfully.
“I guess white favors you,” answered Hollis, with what he would have called a festive wave of his hand.
Her mood had now changed. “It’s no matter, I’m not afraid!” She was speaking her thoughts aloud, sure that he would not understand. But he did understand.
The other canoe came into sight after a while, shooting round a point; Eve waved her handkerchief in answer to Paul’s hail; the two boats met.
“Mr. Hollis knows that you are to take me back,” said Eve, as eagerly as a child.
Paul glanced at Hollis. But the other man bore the look bravely. “Proud to be of service,” he answered, waving his hand again, with two fingers extended lightly. He changed places with Paul; Paul and Eve, in their canoe, glided away.
It was at this moment that Cicely, who had been asleep, opened her eyes. Her lodge was quiet; Mrs. Mile was reading near the window, her seat carefully placed so that the light should fall over her left shoulder upon the page.
Cicely gazed at her for some time; then she jumped from the couch with a quick bound. “It’s impossible to lie here another instant and see that History of Windham! The next thing, you’ll be proposing to read it aloud to me; you look exactly like a woman who loves to read aloud.” She began to put on her shoes.
“You are going for a walk? I shall be glad to go too,” answered Mrs. Mile promptly, putting a marker in her book, and rising.
“No,” responded Cicely; “I can’t have those boots of yours pounding along beside me to-day, Priscilla Jane. Impossible.”
“Well, I do declare!” said Mrs. Mile, reduced in her surprise to the language of her youth. “They can’t pound much, Mrs. Morrison, in the sand; and there’s nothing but sand here.”
“They grind it down!” answered Cicely. “You can call grandpa, if you don’t want me to go alone; but come with me to-day you shall not, you clean, broad-faced, turn-out-your-toes, do-your-duty old relict of Abner Whittredge Mile.” She looked at Mrs. Mile consideringly as she said this, bringing out each word in a soft, clear tone.
The judge was listlessly roving about the beach. Mrs. Mile gave him Cicely’s request. “She is saying very odd things to-day, sir,” she added, impersonally.
The judge, alarmed, hurried to the lodge; Mrs. Mile could not keep up with him.
“Priscilla Jane is short-winded, isn’t she?” remarked Cicely, at the lodge door, as he joined her. “Whenever she comes uphill, she always stops, and pretends to admire the view, while she pants, ‘What a beautiful scene! What a privilege to see it!’”
The judge grinned; he too had heard Mrs. Mile speak of “privileges.”
“Come for a walk, grandpa,” Cicely went on. She took his arm and they went away together, followed by the careful eyes of the nurse, who had paused at the top of the ascent.
“This is a ruse, grandpa,” Cicely said, after a while. “I wanted to take a walk alone, and she wouldn’t let me; but you will.”
“Why alone, my child?”
“Because I’m always being watched; I’m just like a person in a cell, don’t you know, with one of those little windows cut in the door, through which the sentinel outside can always look in; I am never alone.”
“It must be dreadful,” the judge answered, with conviction.
“Wait till you have seen Priscilla Jane in her night-gown,” said Cicely, with equal conclusiveness.
“Heaven forbid!” said the judge, with a shrill little chuckle. Then he turned and looked at her; she seemed so much like her old self.
“You will let me go, grandpa?” She put up her face and kissed him.
“If you will promise to come back soon.”
“Of course I will.”
He let her go on alone. She looked back and smiled once or twice; then he lost sight of her; he returned to the beach by a roundabout way, in order to deceive Priscilla Jane; he was almost as much pleased as Cicely to outwit her.
Cicely went on through the forest; she walked slowly, not stopping to gather flowers as usual. After a while her vague glance rested upon two figures in the distance. She stopped, and as, by chance, she was standing close beside the trunk of a large tree, her own person was concealed. The two figures were coming in her direction, they drew nearer, they paused; and then there followed a picture as old as Paris and Helen, as old as Tristram and Isolde: a lover taking in his arms the woman he adores. And it was Paul Tennant who was the lover; it was Eve who looked up at him with all her heart in her eyes.
A shock passed over Cicely, the expression of her face changed rapidly as her gaze remained fixed upon Eve: first, surprise; then a strange quick anger; then perplexity. She left her place, and went rapidly forward.
Eve saw her first, she drew herself away from Paul; but immediately she came back to him, laying her hand on his shoulder as if to hold him, to keep him by her side.
“Paul,” said Cicely, still looking at Eve, “something has come to me; Eve told me that she did a dreadful thing.” And now she transferred her gaze to Paul, looking at him with earnestness, as if appealing to him to lighten her perplexity.
“Yes, dear; let us go back to the camp,” said Paul, soothingly.
“Wait till I have told you all. She came to me, and asked—I don’t know where it was exactly?” And now she looked at Eve, inquiringly.
Eve’s eyes met hers, and the deep antagonism of the expression roused the dulled intelligence. “How you do hate me, Eve! It’s because you love Paul. I don’t see how Paul can like you, when you were always so hard to Ferdie; for from the first she was hard to him, Paul; from the very first. I remember—“
Eve, terrified, turned away, thus releasing Cicely from the spell of her menacing glance.
Cicely paused; and then went back to her former narrative confusedly, speaking with interruptions, with pauses. “She came to me, Paul, and she asked, ‘Cicely, do you know how he died?’ And I said, ‘Yes; there were two negroes.’ And she answered me, ‘No; there were no negroes—’”
“Dreams, Cicely,” said Paul, kindly. “Every one has dreams like that.”
“No. I have a great many dreams, but this was not one of them,” responded Cicely. “Wait; it will come to me.”
“Take her back to the camp; carry her,” said Eve, in a sharp voice.
“Oh, she’ll come without that,” Paul answered, smiling at the peremptory tone.
“You go first, then. I will bring her.”
“Don’t leave me alone with Eve,” pleaded Cicely, shrinking close to Paul.
“Take her back,” said Eve. And her voice expressed such acute suffering that Paul did his best to content her.
“Come,” he said, gently, taking Cicely’s hand.
“A moment,” answered Cicely, putting her other hand on Paul’s arm, as if to hold his attention. “And then she said: ‘Don’t you remember that we escaped through the woods to the north point, and that you tried to push off the boat, and couldn’t. Don’t you remember that gleam of the candle down the dark road?’”
Eve made an involuntary movement.
“I wonder what candle she could have been thinking of!” pursued Cicely, in a musing voice. “There are a great many candles in the Catholic churches, that I know.”
Eve looked across at Paul with triumph in her eyes.
“And she said that a baby climbed up by one of the seats,” Cicely went on. “And that this man—I don’t know who he was, exactly—made a dash forward—” Here she lost the thread, and stopped. Then she began again: “She took me away ever so far—we went in a steamboat; and Ferdie died all alone! You can’t like her for that, Paul; you can’t!” Her face altered. “Why don’t I see him over there on the other beach?” she asked, quickly.
“You see?” said Eve, with trembling lips.
“Yes,” answered Paul, watching the quivering motion. “We haven’t had our walk, Eve; remember that.”
“I can come out again. After we have got her back.”
Cicely had ceased speaking. She turned and searched Eve’s face with eyes that dwelt and lingered. “How happy you look, Eve! And yet I am sure you have no right to be happy, I am sure there is some reason—The trouble is that I can’t remember what it is! Perhaps it will come to me yet,” she added, threateningly.
Paul, drew her away; he took her back to the camp.
That evening, Eve came to him on the beach.
“Do you love me? Do you love me the same as ever?” she said.
“Do you think I have had time to change since afternoon?” he asked, laughing.
And then life came back to the woman by his side, came in the red that flushed her cheeks and her white throat, in her revived breath.
“Paul,” she said, after a while, “send Cicely home; send her home with her grandfather, she can travel now without danger.”
“I can’t desert Cicely,” said Paul, surprised.
“It wouldn’t be desertion; you can always help her. And she would be much happier there than here.”
“She’s not going to be very happy anywhere, I am afraid.”
“The judge would be happier, too,” said Eve, shifting her ground.
“I dare say. Poor old man!”
“A winter in Port aux Pins would kill him,” Eve continued.
“I intended to take them south before the real winter, the deep snow.”
“Mrs. Mile could go now. And—and perhaps Mr. Hollis.”
“Kit? What could Kit do down there?”
“Marry Miss Sabrina,” suggested Eve, with a sudden burst of wild laughter, in which Paul joined.
“They are all to go, are they? But you and I are not to go; is that your plan?” he went on.
“Yes.”
He kissed her. “Paul Tennant and his wife will take Cicely south themselves,” he said, stroking her hair caressingly. “It’s always braided so closely, Eve; how long is it when down?”
But she did not hear these whispered words; she drew herself away from him with passionate strength. “No, she must go with some one else; she can go with any one you please; we can have two nurses, instead of one. But you—you must not go; you must stay with me.”
“Why, Eve, I hardly know you! Why do you feel so about poor little Cicely? Why strike a person who’s down?”
“Oh, yes—down; that is what you all say. Yet she has had everything, even if she has lost it now; and some people go through all their lives without one single thing they really care for. She shall not rob me of this, I will not let her. I defy her; I defy her!”
“She shall go back to Romney,” said Paul. What these disagreements between the two women were about, he did not know. His idea was that he would marry Eve as soon as possible—within the next ten days; and then, after they were married, he would tell her that it was best that they should take Cicely south themselves. She would see the good sense of his decision, she would not dispute his judgment when once she was his wife; she could not have any real dislike for poor little Cicely, that was impossible.
Eve came back to him humbly enough. “I am afraid you do not like my interfering with your plans?” she said.
“You may interfere as much as you like,” answered Paul, smiling.
XXVIII.
THE next day Paul started at dawn for Port aux Pins, he wished to make the house ready for his wife; he had not much money, but there was one room in the plain cottage which should be beautiful. No suspicion came to him that there would be any difficulty in making it beautiful; his idea was simply that it was a matter of new furniture.
He reached Port aux Pins at night, and let himself into his cottage with his key; lighting a candle, he went to his room. He had never been dissatisfied with this simple apartment, he was not dissatisfied now; there was a good closet, where he could hang up his clothes; there was a broad shelf, where he could put his hand in the dark upon anything which he might want; there was his iron bedstead, and there was his white-pine bureau; two wooden chairs; a wash-hand stand, with a large bowl; a huge tin pail for water, a flat bath-tub in position on the floor, and plenty of towels and sponges—what could man want more?
But a woman would want more; and he gave a little laugh, which had a thrill in it, as he thought of Eve standing there, and looking about her at his plain masculine arrangements. The bare floor would not please her, perhaps; he must order a carpet. “Turkey,” he thought, vaguely; he had heard the word, and supposed that it signified something very light in color, with a great many brilliant roses. “Perhaps there ought to be a few more little things,” he said to himself, doubtfully. Then, after another moment’s survey: “But I needn’t be disturbed, she’ll soon fill it full of tottlish little tables and dimity; she’ll flounce everything with white muslin, and tie everything with blue ribbons; she’ll overflow into the next room too, this won’t be enough for her. Perhaps I’d better throw the two into one, with a big fireplace—I know she likes big fireplaces; if it’s as large as that, I sha’n’t be suffocated, even with all her muslin.” And, with another fond laugh, he turned in.
The morning after Paul’s departure, Eve did not go near Cicely; she asked Mrs. Mile, in a tone which even that unimaginative woman found haughty, how Mrs. Morrison was. (In reality the haughtiness hid a trembling fear.)
“She seems better, Miss Bruce, as regards her physical state. Truth compels me to add, however, that she says extremely irrational things.”
“What things?” asked Eve, with a pang of dread. For the things which Mrs. Mile would call irrational might indicate that Cicely was herself again, Mrs. Mile’s idea of the rational being always the commonplace.
“When she first woke, ma’am, she said, ‘Oh, what a splendid wind!—how it does blow! I must go out and run and run. Can you run, Priscilla Jane?’—when my name, ma’am, is Priscilla Ann. Seeing that she was so lively, I began to tell her a dream which I had had. She interrupted me: ‘Dreams are the reflections of our thoughts by day, Priscilla Jane. I know your thoughts by day; they are wearing. I don’t want repetitions of them by night, I should be ground to powder.’ Now, ma’am, could anything be more irrational?”
“She is herself again!” thought Eve. She went off into the forest, and did not return until the noon meal was over. Going to the kitchen, she ate some bread, she was fond of dry bread; coming back after this frugal repast, she still avoided Cicely’s lodge, she went down to the beach. Here her restlessness ceased for the moment; she sat looking over the water, her eyes not seeing it, seeing only Paul. After half an hour, Hollis, with simulated carelessness, passed that way and stopped. As soon as he saw her face he said to himself, “They are to be married immediately!”
“We sha’n’t be staying much longer at Jupiter Light, I guess,” he said aloud, in a jocular tone.
“No,” Eve answered. “The summer is really over,” she added, as if in explanation.
“Don’t look much like it to-day.”
She made no reply.
“Paul went back to Potterpins rather in a hurry, didn’t he?” pursued Hollis, playing with his misery.
“Yes.—He has a good deal to do,” she continued. If he could not resist playing with his misery, neither could she help exulting in her happiness, parading it for her own joy in spoken words; it made it more real.
“Good deal to do? He didn’t tell me about it; perhaps I could have helped him,” Hollis went on awkwardly, but looking at her with all his heart in his eyes—his poor, hungry, unsatisfied old heart.
“You could be of use to us,” said Eve, suddenly; (“Us!” thought Hollis.)—“the very greatest, Mr. Hollis. If you would go south with Judge Abercrombie and Mrs. Morrison it would be everything. They will probably go in a week or ten days, and Mrs. Mile accompanies them; but if you could go too, it would be much safer.”
“And you to stay in Port aux Pins with Paul,” thought Hollis. “I don’t grudge it to you, Evie, God knows I don’t—may you be very happy, sweet one! But I shall have to get out of this all the same. I’m ashamed of myself, old fellow that I am, but I can’t stand it, I can’t! I shall have to clear out. I’ll go west.”
Eve, meanwhile, was waiting for his reply. “Of course, Miss Bruce,” he answered aloud, “should like nothing better than a little run down South. Why, the old judge and me, we’ll make a regular spree of it!” And he slapped his leg in confirmation.
Eve gave him a bright smile by way of thanks. But she was too much absorbed to talk long with anybody, and presently she left him, taking a path through the woods.
In fifteen minutes her restlessness brought her back again. She stopped at the edge of the camp; Porley, near by, was making “houses”—that is, squares and pyramids of the little pebbles of the beach, which Master Jack demolished when completed, with the air of a conqueror. “Porley, go and ask the nurse how Mrs. Morrison is now;—whether she is more quiet.”
“Mis’ Morrison, she’s ebber so much weller to-day,” volunteered Porley. “When she ain’t so quiet, Miss Bruce—droppin’ off inter naps all de time—den she’s weller.”
“Do as I tell you,” said Eve.
The girl went off.
“House,” demanded Jack.
Eve took him on her shoulder instead.
“Sing to Jacky; poor, poor Jacky!” said the child, gleefully.
“Mis’ Mile, she say Mis’ Morrison done gone ter sleep dish yere minute,” reported Porley, with a crestfallen air, returning.
Eve’s spirits rose. “Oh, Jack, naughty boy!” She laughed convulsively, lifting up her shoulder, as the child tried to insert one of his pebbles under her linen collar, selecting a particularly ticklish spot on her throat for the purpose.—“Do you want to go out on the lake?”
Jack dropped his pebble; he was always wild with delight at the prospect of a voyage. Porley picked up his straw hat, and brought his little coat, in case the air should grow cool; in ten minutes they were afloat. Eve turned the canoe down the lake, rowing eastward.
After a voyage of twenty minutes, she headed the boat shoreward and landed; the woods hereabout had a gray-green look which tempted her; they brought back the memory of that first walk with Paul. “See to Jack,” she said to Porley briefly, lifting the child safely to the beach. “I shall be back soon.” Entering the wood, she walked on at random, keeping within sight of the water.
She was lost in a day-dream, one of those day-dreams which come sometimes to certain temperaments with such vividness that the real world disappears; she was with Paul, she was looking at him, his arm was round her, their future life together unrolled itself before her day by day, hour by hour, in all its details; in her happiness, all remembrance of anything else vanished away.
How long this state lasted she never knew. At a certain point a distant cry crossed the still ecstasy; but it reached her vaguely, it did not bring her back. A second summons was more distinct; but it seemed an impertinence which it was not necessary to answer. A third time came the sound, and now there were syllables: “Miss E-eve! Miss E-eve!” Then, a moment later, “Oh, Ba-by!” She recognized the shrillness of a negro woman’s voice—it was Porley. “Baby?” That could only mean Jack! The trance was over, she felt as if a whip had been brought suddenly down upon her shoulders. She rushed to the lake, and from there along the beach towards the spot where she had left the child.
The screams grew louder. A bend hid that part of the beach from her view; would she never reach the end of that bend! She was possessed by a great fear. “Oh, don’t let anything happen to baby!” She could not have told herself to whom she was appealing.
At last she reached the curve, she saw what had happened: the child, alone in the canoe, had been carried out to deep water.
Porley, frantic with grief, had waded out as far as she could; she was standing with the water up to her chin, sobbing aloud. Eve’s flushed face turned white. She beckoned to Porley to come to her. Then she forced herself to stand motionless, in order to recover her breath. As Porley came up, “Stop crying!” she commanded. “We must not frighten him. Go back under the trees where he cannot see you, and sit there quietly; don’t speak.”
When she was left alone, she went up the beach until she was on a line with the canoe; the boat moved waywardly and slowly, but it was being carried all the time still farther from the shore. “Jacky, are you having a good time out there?” she called, with a smiling face, as though the escapade had been his own, and he had cleverly outwitted them.
There was not a grain of the coward in the child. “Ess,” he called back, triumphantly. He was sitting on a folded shawl in the bottom of the canoe, holding on with his hands to the sides; his eyes came just above its edge.
“Aunty Eve is going to get a boat and come out after you,” Eve went on; “then we’ll go fishing. But Jack must sit perfectly still, or else she won’t come; perfectly still. Does Jacky hear?”
“Ess,” called Jack again.
“If you are tired, put your head down and go to sleep. Aunty Eve will come, soon if you are still; not if you move about.”
“I’s still,” called Jack, in a high key.
“If there was only a man here!—a man could swim out and bring the boat in,” she thought, wringing her hands, and then stopping lest Jack should see the motion. She did not allow herself to think—“If Paul were only here!” It was on Paul’s account, to be able to think of him by herself, to dream of their daily life together—it was for this that she had left her brother’s child on that solitary beach, with only a careless negro girl to watch over him! But there was no man near, and there was no second boat. The canoe was already visibly farther away; little Jack’s eyes, looking at her, were becoming indistinct, she could see only the outline of his head and the yellow of his curls. She waved her hand to him and sang, clearly and gayly:
“Row the boat, row the boat, up to the strand;
Before our door there is dry land—”
And Jack answered with a distant “Ess.” Then he tried to go on with it. “Who pums idder, all booted an’ spur-r-rd,” he chanted, straining his little lungs to the utmost, so that his auntie should hear him.
The tears poured down Eve’s cheeks as she heard the baby voice; she knew he could not see them. For an instant, she thought of trying to swim out to him herself. “I can swim. It isn’t very far.” She began to unbutton her boots. But should she have the strength to bring him in, either in the canoe or in her arms? And if she should sink, there would be no one to save Jack. She rebuttoned her boots and ran to Porley. “Go to the beach, and walk up and down where Jack can see you. Call to him once in a while, but not too often; call gayly, don’t let him see that you are frightened; if he thinks you are frightened, he will become frightened himself and move about; then he will upset the boat. Do you understand what I mean? I am going back to the camp for another canoe. Keep him in sight; and try—do try to be sensible.”
She was off. Without much hope she began her race. Before she passed beyond hearing, Porley’s voice came to her: “Hi-yi, Jack! Yo’re kyar’in on now, ain’t yer? Splendid fun, sho! Wisht I was ’long!” And then followed a high chuckle, which Porley intended as a laugh. At least the girl had understood.
Eve could run very swiftly; her light figure, with its long step, made running easy to her. Yet each minute was now so precious that instinctively she used every precaution: she let her arms hang lifelessly, so that no energy should be spent in poising them; she kept her lips apart, and her eyes fixed on the beach about two yards in advance of her, so that she could select as she ran the best places for her feet, and avoid the loose stones. Her slender feet, too (undressed they were models for a sculptor), aided her by their elasticity; she wore a light boot, longer than her foot, and the silken web of her stocking was longer, so that her step was never cramped. But she could not run as rapidly as her canoe had skimmed the water under her strong strokes when it had brought her here; and that voyage had lasted twenty minutes; she remembered this with dread. For a while she ran rapidly—too rapidly; then, feeling that her breath was labored, she forced herself to slacken her pace and make it more regular; as much as possible like a machine. Thus she ran on. Once she was obliged to stop. Then she fell into a long swinging step, throwing her body forward a little from right to left as her weight fell now upon one foot, now upon the other, and this change was such a relief that she felt as if she could run the remaining distance with comparative ease. But before she reached the camp, she had come to the end of all her arrangements and experiments; she was desperate, panting.
“If I can only keep on until they see me!”
The camp had an unusually quiet look; so far as her eyes, injected with red by the effort she had made, could see, there were no moving figures anywhere; no one sitting on the benches; no one on the beach. Where were all the people?—what could have become of them? Hollis and the judge?—even the cook and the Irishmen? Nothing stirred; it seemed to her as if the very leaves on the trees and the waters of the lake had been struck by an unnatural calm. She came to the first stakes, where the nets were sometimes spread out. The nets were not there now. Then she came to the cistern—a sunken cask to which water was brought from an ice-cold spring; still no sound. Then the wood-pile; the Irishmen had evidently been adding to it that day, for an axe remained in a severed trunk; but no one was there. Though she had kept up her pace without break as she ran past these familiar objects, there was now a singing in her ears, and she could scarcely see, everything being rimmed by the hot, red blur which seemed to exhale from her own eyes. She reached the line of lodges at last; leaving the beach, and going through the wood, she went straight to Cicely’s door. It was closed. She opened it. “Cicely!” she said, or rather her lips formed the name without a sound.
“What is the matter? Where is Jack?” cried Cicely, springing up as soon as she saw Eve’s face.
They met, grasping each other’s hands.
“Where is he? What have you done with him?” Cicely repeated, holding Eve with a grasp of iron.
Eve could not talk. But she felt the agony in the mother’s cry. “Safe,” she articulated.
Cicely relaxed her hold. Eve sank to her knees; thence to the floor.
Cicely seemed to understand; she brought a pillow with business-like swiftness, and placed it under Eve’s head; then she waited. Eve’s eyes were closed; her throat and chest labored so, as she lay with her head thrown back, that Cicely bent down and quickly took out the little arrow-pin, and unbuttoned the top buttons of her dress. This relieved Eve; the convulsive panting grew quiet.
But with her first long breath she was on her feet again. “Come!” she said. She opened the door and left the lodge, hurrying down to the beach; thence she ran westward along the shore to the point where the canoes were kept. Cicely ran by her side without speaking; they had no need of words.
Reaching the boats, Eve began to push one of them towards the water. “Call Mr. Hollis;—go up to the edge of the wood and call,” she said to Cicely, briefly.
“Gone fishing,” Cicely responded, helping to push the boat on the other side.
At this moment some one appeared—one of the Irishmen.
“Take him and follow in that other canoe,” said Eve. “We want all the help we can get.”
As they pushed off rapidly—three minutes had not passed since they left the lodge—Priscilla Mile came hurrying down to the shore; she had been taking her daily exercise—a brisk walk of half an hour, timed by her watch. “Mrs. Morrison, Mrs. Morrison, where are you going? Take me with you.”
Cicely did not even look at her. “Go on,” she said to the man.
Eve was paddling rapidly; the second canoe followed hers.
When Mrs. Mile found that the two boats kept on their course, she went back to the lodge, put on her bonnet and shawl, and set off down the beach in the direction in which they were going, walking with steady steps, the shawl compactly pinned with two strong shawl-pins representing beetles.
As soon as they were fairly afloat, Cicely called: “Where is Jack? Tell me about it.”
“Presently,” answered Eve, without turning her head.
“No. Now!” said the mother, peremptorily.
“He is out on the lake, in the canoe.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Oh! and it’s getting towards night! Row faster; what is the matter with you?” (This to the Irishman.) “Eve, wait; how far out is he?”
“It’s very calm,” Eve answered.
“But in the dark we can never find him,” wailed the mother, in a broken voice.
Eve made swift, tireless strokes. The Irishman could not keep up with her.
It was growing towards night, as Cicely had said; the days were shorter now; clouds were gathering too, though the air and water remained strangely still; the night would be dark.
“Your arms are like willow twigs, you have no strength,” said Cicely to the Irishman. “Hurry!”
The man had plenty of strength, and was exerting every atom of it. Still Eve kept ahead of him. “Oh, Jack!” she said to herself, “let me be in time!” It was her brother to whom she was appealing.
She reached the spot where she had left Porley; but there was no Porley there. Without stopping, she paddled on eastward; Cicely’s canoe was now some distance behind. Fifteen minutes more and she saw Porley, she rowed in rapidly. “Where is he?”
“Dair!” answered Porley, pointing over the darkening water with a gesture that was tragic in its despair.
At first Eve saw nothing; then she distinguished a black speck, she pointed towards it with her paddle.
“Yass’m, dat’s him. I ’ain’t nebber take my yies off ’em,” said the girl, crying.
“Tell Mrs. Morrison. She’s coming,” said Eve. She turned her boat and paddled out rapidly towards the speck.
“If I only had matches—why didn’t I bring some? It will be dark soon. But it’s so calm that nothing can have happened to him; he will be asleep.” In spite of her pretended certainty, however, dread held her heart as in a vise. “I won’t think—only row.” She tried to keep her mind a blank, resorting to the device of counting her strokes with great interest. On the light craft sped, with the peculiar skimming motion of the Indian canoe, as if it were gliding on the surface of the water. The twilight grew deeper.
There came a little gust, lightning showed itself for an instant in the bank of clouds across the southern sky. “There is going to be a storm.” She stopped; the other boat, which had been following her swiftly, came up.
“Have you ever been out in a canoe in a storm?” she called to the Irishman, keeping her own boat well away from Cicely’s.
“No, mum.”
“Take Mrs. Morrison back to shore, then, as fast as you can.”
“Go on!” commanded Cicely, with flashing eyes.
There came another gust. The man, perplexed by the contrary orders, made wrong strokes; the boat careened, then righted itself.
“Take her back,” called Eve, starting onward again.
“Follow that canoe!” said Cicely.
The man tried to obey Cicely; to intensify his obedience he stood up and paddled with his back bent. There came another flurry of wind; his boat careened again, and he lost his balance, he gave a yell. For a moment Eve thought that he had gone overboard. But he had only crouched. “Go back—while you can,” she called, warningly.
And this time he obeyed her.
“Eve, take me with you—take me!” cried Cicely, in a tone that went to the heart.
“We needn’t both of us die,” Eve answered, calling back for the last time.
As she went forward on her course, lightning began to show itself frequently in pallid forks on the dark cloud-bank. “If only there’s no gale!” she thought. Through these minutes she had been able to distinguish what she supposed was the baby’s canoe; but now she lost it. She rowed on at random; then she began to call. Nothing answered. The lightning grew brighter, and she blessed the flashes; they would show her, perhaps, what she was in search of; with every gleam she scanned the lake in a different direction. But she saw nothing. She called again: “Jacky! Jack-y!” A great bird flew by, close over her head, and startled her; its wings made a rushing sound. “Jack-y! Jack-y!” She rowed on, calling loudly.
It was now perfectly dark. Presently an unusually brilliant gleam revealed for an instant a dark object on her left. She rowed towards it. “Jacky, speak to Aunty Eve. Aunty Eve is close beside you.” She put her whole heart into this cry; then she waited, breathless.
From a distance came a sound, the sweetest which Eve Bruce had ever heard. “Ess,” said Jack’s brave little voice.
She tried to row towards it. Before she could reach the spot a wind coming from the south drove her canoe back. “Jacky, Jacky, say yes again.”
“Ess,” said the voice, fainter, and farther away.
The wind was stronger now, and it began to make a noise too, as it crossed the lake.
“Jacky, Jacky, you must answer me.”
“Ess.”
A crashing peal of thunder broke over their heads; when it had ceased, she could hear the poor little lad crying. His boat must have drifted, for his voice came from a new direction.
“I am coming directly to you, Jacky,” she called, altering her course rapidly.
The thunder began again, and filled her ears. When it ceased, all was still.
“Jacky! Jacky!”
No answer.
And now there came another cry: “Eve, where are you? Wait for me.” It was Cicely.
“This way,” called Eve.
She never dreamed that Cicely was alone; she supposed that the Irishman had taken heart of grace and ventured back. But presently a canoe touched hers, and there in the night she saw Cicely all alone, like a phantom. “Baby?” demanded Cicely, holding the edge of Eve’s boat.
“I heard him only a moment ago,” answered Eve, as excited as herself. “Jacky! Jacky!”
No reply.
Then Cicely’s voice sounded forth clearly: “It’s mamma, Jack. Speak to mamma.”
“Mam-ma!” came the answer. A distant sound, but full of joy.
Eve put her paddle in the water again. “Wait,” said Cicely. And she stepped from her canoe into Eve’s, performing the difficult feat without hesitation or tremor. The other canoe was abandoned, and Eve was off with a strong stroke.
“Call,” she said.
Cicely called, and Jack answered.
“Call again.”
“His poor little throat will be so tired!” said Cicely, her own voice trembling.
“We must,” said Eve.
“Jack-y!”
“Ess.”
On they went, never reaching him, though he answered four times; for, in spite of the intensity of Eve’s exertion, the sound constantly changed its direction. Cicely called to her child, she sang to him; she even laughed. “How slow you are!” she said to Eve. “Don’t stop.”
“I stopped to listen.”
But presently they were both listening in vain. Jack’s voice had ceased.
The wind now blew not in gusts, but steadily. Eve still rowed with all her strength, in reality at random, though; with each new flash of lightning she took a new direction, so that her course resembled the spokes of a wheel.
“He has of course fallen asleep,” said Cicely. “He is always so good about going to bed.”
Their canoe now rose and fell perceptibly; the tranquillity of the lake was broken, it was no longer gray glass, nor a black floor; first there was a swell; then little waves showed themselves; by-and-by these waves had crests. Eve, kneeling on the bottom, exerted all her intelligence to keep the boat in the right position.