"You can't stay here by yourself," he said.
"I can't go back to town and leave Flora here by herself. We've got to
find her!"
He nodded; they were both of them entirely at ease. That tense
consciousness of a few minutes before had disappeared.
"I'm worried," Fred said, again; "she was awfully low-spirited
because--because somebody hadn't written to her."
"Oh, she's all right. She'll be back in a few minutes."
"But where has she gone?"
"Perhaps she walked into Laketon."
"What for? Besides, it's nearly five miles!" They were standing in the
kitchen doorway; Zip pushed past them and went out into the mist;
smelled about, stretching first his front legs, then his hind legs. The
motor loomed like a black monster under the tree. Zip gave a bored look
at the lingering guest.
"_Flor-a-a!_"
No answer; just the lake, sighing and rippling in the sedge.
"Could she have gone down to the water?" Howard said; "have you got
such a thing as a lantern? I'll go out and look."
"No; but light that lamp on the center-table--a candle might blow out."
He went into the other room, and she heard him scratch a match and
fumble with the lamp-chimney. In that minute, alone, listening all the
while for Flora's returning step, her mind leaped back to that moment in
front of the fire. His look--astounded, incredulous, shocked--was burned
into her memory; his distressed words rung in her ears. She was not
conscious of any pain because he did not love her. She was simply
stunned by the jolt of suddenly and unexpectedly stepping down into the
old, irrational modesties....
Her face began to scorch. She went out on the porch and called again,
mechanically; some water dripping from the eaves on her bare head ran
down one blazing cheek; the coolness gave her an acute sense of relief
that struggled through the medley of tearing emotions; she was saying to
herself: "Where can she be? She hasn't washed the dishes! (_He refused
me._)"
Howard, holding the lamp over his head, came up behind her and went down
the steps into the mist. Fred followed him, Zip lumbering along at her
heels.
"She must have left the house this way; we know that," she said.
"Come down to the beach," he said.
"Yes; sometimes she used to sit on that big rock," Frederica remembered.
He walked ahead of her; the light, shining through the solferino
lamp-shade, made a rosy nimbus about his bare head, but scarcely
penetrated the fog. They went thus, all three, single file, along the
path to the rickety wooden pier; at the end of it, they stood staring
out into the mist. Twice he called, loudly, "_Flora!_"...
"Not a sound!" he said. "Is there any possible place in the house where
she could have hidden herself? I mean, gone to sleep, or anything?"
"Not a place! I've looked everywhere. (_He refused me._)"
They turned silently to go back. Just as they reached the path again
Howard stopped--so abruptly that the lamp sent a jarring gleam into the
white darkness.
"_Fred--?_"
She looked where he was looking, and caught her breath.
"No!" she said; "oh, no--no! It can't be!"
"Hold the lamp. I'll go and see--"
He climbed down the little bluff and waded into the sedge. The swaying
mass that had looked like a stone until a larger wave stirred it, came
in nearer the shore, caught on the shoaling beach, rolled, and was
still. Frederica saw him bend over it, then try, frantically, to lift it
in his arms. She put the lamp on the wharf. ("Don't touch it, Zip!"),
slid, catching at tufts of grass, and bending branches--down the
crumbling bank, plunged into the water up to her knees, and together,
half pulling, half carrying that sodden bundle, they stumbled over the
oozy bottom and through the sedges. The lifting it up the bluff was
terrible; the dripping figure, sagging and bending, was so heavy!
"We must get her into the house," Frederica panted. And, somehow or
other, they did it, Howard taking the shoulders, and Fred the feet. They
were gasping with the strain of it when they laid her on the floor of
the living-room.
"Is she dead?" he said.
Frederica thrust her hand into the bosom of Flora's dress--and held her
breath.
"I can't tell; we mustn't stop to find out! You know what to do? Pull
her arms up, this way!"
They stood over her, Howard following Fred's short, sharp directions,
and, even in the horror of the moment, conscious of a wondering
admiration at her efficiency. But no quiver of life came into the still
face.
"We ought to get a doctor!" Fred said, at last, panting.
"I'll go instantly!"
"No, the quickest way will be to take her to a doctor, not bring a
doctor to her!"
"But if she is dead we ought not to move her! That's the law."
"Law? I don't care anything about the law! Life is what I'm thinking of!
We don't know whether she's dead or not. Crank your car! I'll get some
blankets--"
He hurried out, and she rushed up-stairs for blankets. She was folding
them about Flora when he came in, the car chugging loudly at the door.
Again, lifting and straining, they carried her out, and got her into the
tonneau. Then Frederica saw the lamp down on the wharf, burning steadily
in the mist.
"Put it out! Put it out! Hurry!" she commanded; and while he ran to do
it she darted back to blow out the candles in the living-room and snap
the lock of the front door--"never mind about taking the lamp into the
house. Leave it on the porch!" she said. Then she got in the car and,
sitting down, put an arm about the crumpling, sodden form. Zip, fearful
of being left, jumped on the front seat, and glanced wonderingly back at
his mistress.
"Fred," Howard said, agitatedly, "I think she's--dead."
"So do I; but _hurry_! Don't lose a minute!" Then, through the noise of
the clutch, she screamed at him: "Doctor Emma Holt! In Laketon!" And the
car jerked forward.
"But that's a woman doctor," he called, over his shoulder.
Just for a moment the habit of revolt asserted itself: "_Why not?_"
Then, "Hurry! Hurry!"
Dr. Emma Holt was five miles away. "I felt," Howard Maitland used to
say, afterward, "as if she were fifty miles away!"
The fog was so thick it was impossible to speed with safety, so they
sped without it, and tore bumping along through the white smother. Twice
he looked around, and saw Fred sitting there, rigid, with that face,
open-mouthed, open-eyed, gray under its brown skin, wabbling, and
dripping on her shoulder.
"She is magnificent!" he thought. "_I_ couldn't do it."
The second time he looked, some reflection from the lamps, gleaming in
the fog, flickered on that set face, and it seemed as if the eyes
closed, then opened again. The horror of it made his hand jerk on the
wheel, and there was a skid out of the ruts that frightened him into
carefulness.
When he sprang out at the house of the "woman doctor," he dared not
glance back into the tonneau. Hammering on the panels of the door, and
keeping his thumb on the bell, he called up to an opening window on the
second floor:
"Doctor! Hurry! A woman has got drowned! Hurry!"
"Where is she?" came a laconic voice from the window.
"Here! In my car! Hurry!"
The window slammed down; a minute later the electric lights were snapped
on in the sleeping house, and hurrying feet came along the hall.