SPIRIT OR MORTAL
The end of that great storm was almost as sudden as its beginning.
Aroused by the silence that succeeded the uproar, Angelique stood up
and rubbed her limbs, stiff with long kneeling. The fire had gone out.
Meroude was asleep on the blankets spread for Margot, who had not
returned, nor the master. As for that matter the house-mistress had
not expected that they ever would.
"There is nothin' left. I am alone. It was the glass. Ah! that the
palsy had but seized my unlucky hand before I took it from its shelf!
How still it is. How clear, too, is my darling's laugh--it rings
through the room--it is a ghost. It will haunt me al-ways, al-ways."
Unable longer to bear the indoor silence, which her fancy filled with
familiar sounds, she unbarred the heavy door and stepped out.
"Ah! is it possible! Can the sun be settin' that way? as if there had
been nothin' happenin'."
Wrecks strewed the open ground about the cabin, poultry coops were
washed away, the cow shed was a heap of ruins, into which the
trembling observer dared not peer. That Snowfoot should be dead was a
calamity but second only to the loss of master and nursling.
"Ah! my beast, my beast. The best in all this northern Maine. That the
master bought and brought in the big canoe for an Easter gift to his
so faithful Angelique. And yet the sun sets as red and calm as if all
was the same as ever."
It was, indeed, a scene of grandeur. The storm, in passing northward,
had left scattered banks of clouds, now colored most brilliantly by
the setting sun and widely reflected on the once more placid lake. But
neither the beauty, nor the sweet, rain-washed air, appealed to the
distracted islander who faced the west and shook her hand in impotent
rage toward it.
"Shine, will you? With the harm all done and nothin' left but me, old
Angelique! Pouf! I turn my back on you!"
Then she ran shoreward with all speed, dreading what she might find
yet eager to know the worst, if there it might be learned. With her
apron over her head she saw only what lay straight before her and so
passed the point of rocks without observing her master lying behind
it. But a few steps further she paused, arrested by a sight which
turned her numb with superstitious terror. What was that coming over
the water? A ghost! a spirit!
Did spirits paddle canoes and sing as this one was singing?
"The boatman's song is borne along far over the water so blue,
And loud and clear, the voice we hear of the boatman so honest
and true;
He's rowing, rowing, rowing along,
He's rowing, rowing, rowing along--
He's rowing and singing his song."
Ghosts should sing hymns, not jolly little ballads like this, in which
one could catch the very rhythm and dip of oar or paddle. Still, it
was as well to wait and see if this were flesh or apparition before
pronouncing judgment.
It was certainly a canoe, snowy white and most familiar--so familiar
that the watcher began to lose her first terror. A girl knelt in it,
Indian fashion, gracefully and evenly dipping her paddle to the melody
of her lips. Her bare head was thrown back and her fair hair floated
loose. Her face was lighted by the western glow, on which she fixed
her eyes with such intentness that she did not perceive the woman who
awaited her with now such mixed emotions.
But Tom saw. Tom, the eagle, perched in the bow, keen of vision and of
prejudice. Between him and old Angelique was a grudge of long
standing. Whenever they met, even after a brief separation, he
expressed his feelings by his hoarsest screech. He did so now and, by
so doing, recalled Margot from sky-gazing and his enemy from doubt.
"Ah! Angelique! Watching for me? How kind of you. Hush, Tom. Let her
alone, good Angelique, poor Angelique!"
The eagle flapped his wings with a melancholy disdain and plunged his
beak in his breast. The old woman on the beach was not worth minding,
after all, by a monarch of the sky--as he would be but for his broken
wing--but the girl was worth everything, even his obedience.
She laughed at his sulkiness, plying her paddle the faster, and soon
reached the pebbly beach, where she sprang out, and drawing her canoe
out of the water, swept her old nurse a curtsey.
"Home again, mother, and hungry for my supper."
"Supper, indeed! Breakin' my heart with your run-about ways! and the
hoorican', with ever'thin' ruined, ever'thin'! The master---- Where's
he, I know not. The great pine broken like a match; the coops, the
cow-house, and Snowfoot---- Ah, me! Yet the little one talks of
supper!"
Margot looked about her in astonishment, scarcely noticing the other's
words. The devastation of her beloved home was evident, even down on
the open beach, and she dared not think what it might be further
inland.
"Why, it must have been a cyclone! We were reading about them only
yesterday and Uncle Hugh--did you say that you knew--where is he?"
Angelique shook her head.
"Can I tell anythin', me? Into the storm he went and out of it he will
come alive, as you have. If the good Lord wills," she added
reverently.
The girl sprang to the woman's side, and caught her arm impatiently.
"Tell me, quick. Where is he? where did you last see him?"
"Goin' into the hoorican', with wood upon his shoulder. To make a
beacon for you. So I guess. But you--tell how you come alive out of
all that?" Sweeping her arm over the outlook.
Margot did not stop to answer but darted toward the point of rocks
where, if anywhere, she knew her guardian would have tried his signal
fire. In a moment she found him.
"Angelique! Angelique! He's here. Quick--quick---- He's---- Oh! is he
dead, is he dead?"
There was both French and Indian blood in mother Ricord's veins, a
passionate loyalty in her heart, and the suppleness of youth still in
her spare frame. With a dash she was at the girl's side and had thrust
her away, to kneel herself and lift her master's head from its hard
pillow of rock.
With swift nervous motions she unfastened his coat and bent her ear to
his breast.
"'Tis only a faint, maybe shock. In all the world was only Margot, and
Margot was lost. Ugh! the hail. See, it is still here--look! water,
and--yes, the tea! It was for you---- Ah!"
Her words ended with a sigh of satisfaction as a slight motion stirred
the features into which she peered so earnestly, and she raised her
master's head a bit higher. Then his eyes slowly opened and the dazed
look gradually gave place to a normal expression.
"Why, Margot! Angelique? What's happened?"
"Oh! Uncle Hugh! are you hurt? are you ill? I found you here behind
the rocks and Angelique says--but I wasn't hurt at all. I wasn't out
in any storm, didn't know there had been one, that is, worth minding,
till I came home----"
"Like a ghost out of the lake. She was not even dead, not she. And she
was singin' fit to burst her throat while you were--well, maybe, not
dead, yourself."
At this juncture, Tom, the inquisitive, thrust his white head forward
into the midst of the group and, in her relief from her first fear,
Margot laughed aloud.
"Don't, Tom! You're one of the family, of course, and since none of
the rest of us will die to please that broken mirror, you may have to!
Especially, if there's a new brood out----"
But here Angelique threw up her free hand with such a gesture of
despair that Margot said no more, and her face sobered again,
remembering that, even though they were all still alive, there might
be suffering untold among her humbler woodland friends. Then, as Mr.
Dutton rose, almost unaided, a fresh regret came:
"That there should be a cyclone, right here at home, and I not to see
it! See! Look, uncle, look! You can trace its very path, just as we
read. Away to the south there is no sign of it, nor on the northeast.
It must have swept up to us out of the southeast and taken our island
in its track. Oh! I wouldn't have missed it for anything."
The man rested his hand upon her shoulder and turned her gently
homeward. His weakness had left him as it had come upon him, with a
suddenness like that of the recent tempest. It was not the first
seizure of the kind, which he had had, though neither of these others
knew it; and the fact added a deeper gravity to his always thoughtful
manner.
"I am most thankful that you were not here; but where could you have
been to escape it?"
"All day in the long cave. To the very end of it I believe, and see! I
found these. They are like the specimens you brought the other day.
They must be some rich metal."
"In the long cave, you? Alone? All day? Margot, Margot, is not the
glass enough? but you must tempt worse luck by goin' there!" cried
Angelique, who had preceded the others on the path, but now faced
about, trembling indignantly. What foolish creature was this who
would pass a whole day in that haunted spot, in spite of the dreadful
tales that had been told of it. "Pouf! But I wear out my poor brain,
everlastin' to study the charms will save you from evil, me. And
yet----"
"You would do well to use some of your charms on Tom, yonder. He's
found an overturned coop and looks too happy to be out of mischief."
The woman wheeled again and was off up the slope like a flash, where
presently the king of birds was treated to the indignity of a sound
boxing, which he resented with squawks and screeches, but not with
talons, since under each foot he held the plump body of a fat chicken.
"Tom thinks a bird in the hand is worth a score of cuffs! and
Angelique's so determined to have somebody die--I hope it won't be
Tom. A pity, though, that harm should have happened to her own pets.
Hark! What is that?"
"Some poor woodland creature in distress. The storm----"
"That's no sound belonging to the forest. But it is--distress!"