II

Marche, buried under a mountain of bed clothes, dreamed that people were

rapping noisily on his door, and grinned in his dream, meaning to let

them rap until they tired of it. Suddenly a voice sounded through his

defiant slumbers, clear and charming as a golden ray parting thick

clouds. The next moment he found himself awake, bolt upright in the icy

dusk of his room, listening.

"Mr. Marche! Won't you _please_ wake up and answer?" came the clear,

young voice again.

"I _beg_ your pardon!" he cried. "I'll be down in a minute!"

He heard her going away downstairs, and for a few seconds he squatted

there, huddled in coverings to the chin, and eying the darkness in a

sort of despair. The feverish drive of Wall Street, late suppers, and

too much good fellowship had not physically hardened Marche. He was

accustomed to have his bath tempered comfortably for his particular

brand of physique. Breakfast, also, was a most carefully ordered

informality with him.

The bitter chill smote him. Cursing the simple life, he crawled gingerly

out of bed, suffered acutely while hunting for a match, lighted the

kerosene lamp with stiffened fingers, and looked about him, shivering.

Then, with a suppressed anathema, he stepped into his folding tub and

emptied the arctic contents of the water pitcher over himself.

Half an hour later he appeared at the breakfast table, hungrier than he

had been in years. There was nobody there to wait on him, but the dishes

and coffee pot were piping hot, and he madly ate eggs and razor-back,

and drank quantities of coffee, and finally set fire to a cigarette,

feeling younger and happier than he had felt for ages.

Of one thing he was excitedly conscious: that dreadful and persistent

dragging feeling at the nape of his neck had vanished. It didn't seem

possible that it could have disappeared overnight, but it had, for the

present, at least.

He went into the sitting room. Nobody was there, either, so he broke his

sealed shell boxes, filled his case with sixes and fives and double B's,

drew his expensive ducking gun from its case and took a look at it,

buckled the straps of his hip boots to his belt, felt in the various

pockets of his shooting coat to see whether matches, pipe, tobacco,

vaseline, oil, shell extractor, knife, handkerchief, gloves, were in

their proper places; found them so, and, lighting another cigarette,

strolled contentedly around the small and almost bare room, bestowing a

contented and patronizing glance upon each humble article and decoration

as he passed.

Evidently this photograph, in an oval frame of old-time water gilt, was

a portrait of Miss Herold's mother. What a charming face, with its

delicate, high-bred nose and lips! The boy, Jim, had her mouth and nose,

and his sister her eyes, slightly tilted to a slant at the outer

corners--beautifully shaped eyes, he remembered.

He lingered a moment, then strolled on, viewing with tolerant

indifference the few poor ornaments on the mantel, the chromos of wild

ducks and shore birds, and found himself again by the lamp-lit table

from which he had started his explorations.

On it were Jim's Latin book, a Bible, and several last year's magazines.

Idly he turned the flyleaf of the schoolbook. Written there was the

boy's name--"Jim, from Daddy."

As he was closing the cover a sudden instinct arrested his hand, and,

not knowing exactly why, he reopened the book and read the inscription

again. He read it again, too, with a vague sensation of familiarity with

it, or with the book, or something somehow connected with it, he could

not tell exactly what; but a slightly uncomfortable feeling remained as

he laid aside the book and stood with brows knitted and eyes absently

bent on the stove.

The next moment Jim came in, wearing a faded overcoat which he had

outgrown.

"Hello!" said Marche, looking up. "Are you ready for me, Jim?"

"Yes, sir."

"What sort of a chance have I?"

"I'm afraid it is blue-bird weather," said the boy diffidently.

Marche scowled, then smiled. "Your sister said it would probably be that

kind of weather. Well, we all have to take a sporting chance with things

in general, don't we, Jim?"

"Yes, sir."

Marche picked up his gun case and cartridge box. The boy offered to take

them, but the young man shook his head.

"Lead on, old sport!" he said cheerily. "I'm a beast of more burdens

than you know anything about. How's your father, by the way?"

"I think father is about the same."

"Doesn't he need a doctor?"

"No, sir, I think not."

"What is it, Jim? Fever?"

"I don't know," said the boy, in a low voice. He led the way, and Marche

followed him out of doors.

A gray light made plain the desolation of the scene, although the sun

had not yet risen. To the south and west the sombre pine woods stretched

away; eastward, a few last year's cornstalks stood, withered in the

clearing, through which a rutted road ran down to the water.

"It isn't the finest farming land in the world, is it, Jim?" he said

humorously.

"I haven't seen any other land," said the boy quietly.

"Don't you remember the Northern country at all?"

"No, sir--except Central Park."

"Oh, you were New-Yorkers?"

"Yes, sir. Father----" and he fell abruptly silent.

They were walking together down the rutted road, and Marche glanced

around at him.

"What were you going to say about your father, Jim?"

"Nothing." Then truth jogged his arm. "I mean I was only going to say

that father and mother and all of us lived there."

"In New York?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is your--your mother living?"

"No, sir."

"I think I saw her picture in the sitting room," he said gently. "She

must have been everything a mother should be."

"Yes, sir."

"Was it long ago, Jim?"

"When she died?"

"Yes."

"Yes, very long ago. Six years ago."

"Before you came here, then?"

"Yes, sir."

After they had walked in silence for a little while, Marche said, "I

suppose you have arranged for somebody to take me out?"

"Yes, sir."

They emerged from the lane to the shore at the same moment, and Marche

glanced about for the expected bayman.

"Oh, there he is!" he said, as a figure came from behind a dory and

waded leisurely shoreward through the shallows--a slight figure in hip

boots and wool shooting hood and coat, who came lightly across the sands

to meet him. And, astonished, he looked into the gray eyes of Molly

Herold.

"Father could not take you," she said, without embarrassment, "and Jim

isn't quite big enough to manage the swans and geese. Do you mind my

acting as your bayman?"

"Mind?" he repeated. "No, of course not. Only--it seems rather rough on

you. Couldn't you have hired a bayman for me?"

"I will, if you wish," she said, her cheeks reddening. "But, really, if

you'll let me, I am perfectly accustomed to bayman's work."

"Do you _want_ to do it?"

She said, without self-consciousness, "If it is the same to you, Mr.

Marche, I had rather that the bayman's wages came to us."

"Certainly--of course," he said hurriedly. Then, smiling: "You look the

part. I took you for a young man, at first. Now, tell me how I can help

you."

"Jim can do that. Still, if you don't mind handling the decoys----"

"Not at all," he said, going up to the fenced inclosures which ran from

a rod or two inland down into the shallow water, making three separate

yards for geese, swans, and ducks.

Jim was already in the duck pen, hustling the several dozen mallard and

black ducks into an inland corral. The indignant birds, quacking a

concerted protest, waddled up from the shore, and, one by one, the boy

seized the suitable ones, and passed them over the fence to Marche. He

handed them to Molly Herold, who waded out to the dory, a duck tucked

under either arm, and slipped them deftly into the decoy-crates forward

and aft.

The geese were harder to manage--great, sleek, pastel-tinted birds whose

wing blows had the force of a man's fist--and they flapped and

struggled and buffeted Jim till his blonde head spun; but at last Marche

and Molly had them crated in the dory.

Then the wild swans' turn came--great, white creatures with black beaks

and feet; and Molly and Marche were laughing as they struggled to catch

them and carry them aboard.

But at last every decoy was squatting in the crates; the mast had been

stepped, guns laid aboard, luncheon stowed away. Marche set his shoulder

to the stern; the girl sprang aboard, and he followed; the triangular

sail filled, and the boat glided out into the sound, straight into the

glittering lens of the rising sun.

A great winter gull flapped across their bows; in the lee of Starfish

Island, long strings of wild ducks rose like shredded clouds, and,

swarming in the sky, swinging, drifting, sheered eastward, out toward

the unseen Atlantic.

"Bluebills and sprigs," said the girl, resting her elbow on the tiller.

"There are geese on the shoal, yonder. They've come out from Currituck.

Oh, I'm afraid it's to be blue-bird weather, Mr. Marche."

"I'm afraid it is," he assented, smiling. "What do you do in that case,

Miss Herold?"

"Go to sleep in the blind," she admitted, with a faint smile, the first

delicate approach to anything resembling the careless confidence of

camaraderie that had yet come from her.

"See the ducks!" she said, as bunch after bunch parted from the water,

distantly, yet all around them, and, gathering like clouds of dusky

bees, whirled away through the sky until they seemed like bands of smoke

high drifting. Presently she turned and looked back, signaling adieu to

the shore, where her brother lifted his arm in response, then turned

away inland.

"That's a nice boy," said Marche briefly, and glanced up to see in his

sister's face the swift and exquisite transformation that requires no

words as answer.

"You seem to like him," said he, laughing.

Molly Herold's gray eyes softened; pride, that had made the love in

them brilliant, faded until they grew almost sombre. Silent, her aloof

gaze remained fixed on the horizon; her lips rested on each other in

sensitive curves. There was no sound save the curling of foam under the

bows.

Marche looked elsewhere; then looked at her again. She sat motionless,

gray eyes remote, one little, wind-roughened hand on the tiller. The

steady breeze filled the sail; the dory stood straight away toward the

blinding glory of the sunrise.

Through the unreal golden light, raft after raft of wild ducks rose and

whirled into the east; blue herons flopped across the water; a

silver-headed eagle, low over the waves, winged his way heavily toward

some goal, doggedly intent upon his own business.

Outside Starfish Shoal the girl eased the sheet as the wind freshened.

Far away on Golden Bar thousands of wild geese, which had been tipping

their sterns skyward in plunging quest of nourishment, resumed a more

stately and normal posture, as though at a spoken command; and the long

ranks, swimming, and led by age and wisdom, slowly moved away into the

glittering east.

At last, off the starboard bow, the low, reedy levels of Foam Island

came into view, and in a few minutes more the dory lay in the shallows,

oars, mast, and rag stowed; and the two young people splashed busily

about in their hip boots, carrying guns, ammunition, and food into the

blind.

Then Molly Herold, standing on the mud bank, flung, one by one, a

squadron of wooden, painted, canvasback decoys into the water, where

they righted themselves, and presently rode the waves, bobbing and

steering with startling fidelity to the real things.

Then it came the turn of the real things. Marche and Molly, a struggling

bird tucked under each arm, waded out along the lanes of stools, feeling

about under the icy water until their fingers encountered the wire-cored

cords. Then, to the leg rings of each madly flapping duck and swan and

goose they snapped on the leads, and the tethered birds, released, beat

the water into foam and flapped and splashed and tugged, until, finally

reconciled, they began to souse themselves with great content, and

either mounted their stools or swam calmly about as far as their tethers

permitted.

Marche, struggling knee-deep in the water, his arms full of wildly

flapping gander, hailed Molly for instructions.

"That's a mated bird!" she called out to him. "Peg him outside by

himself!"

So Marche pegged out the furious old gander, whose name was Uncle

Dudley, and in a few minutes that dignified and insulted bird, missing

his spouse, began to talk about it.

Every wifely feeling outraged, his spouse replied loudly from the

extreme end of the inner lane, telling her husband, and every duck,

goose, and swan in the vicinity, what she thought of such an inhuman

separation.

Molly laughed, and so did Marche. Duck after duck, goose after goose,

joined indignantly in the conversation. The mallard drakes twisted their

emerald-green heads and began that low, half gurgling, half quacking

conversation in which their mottled brown and gray mates joined with

louder quacks. The geese conversed freely; but the long-necked swans

held their peace, occupied with the problem of picking to pieces the

snaps on their anklets.

"Now," said Molly breathlessly, as the last madly protesting bird had

been stooled, "let's get into the blind as soon as we can, Mr. Marche.

There may be ducks in Currituck still, and every minute counts now."

So Marche towed the dory around to the westward and drew it into a

channel where it might lie concealed under the reeds.

When he came across to the blind he found Molly there, seated on the

plank in the cemented pit behind the screen of reeds and rushes, laying

out for him his cartridges.

There they were, in neat rows on the rail, fives, sixes, and a few of

swanshot, ranged in front of him. And his 12-gauge, all ready, save for

the loading, lay across the pit to his right. So he dropped his booted

feet into the wooden tub where a foot-warmer lay, picked up the gun,

slid a pair of sixes into it, laid it beside him, and turned toward Miss

Herold.

The wool collar of her sweater was turned up about her delicately molded

throat and face. The wild-rose color ran riot in her cheeks, and her

eyes, sky tinted now, were wide open under the dark lashes, and the wind

stirred her hair till it rippled bronze and gold under the edge of her

shooting hood. She, too, was perfectly ready. A cheap, heavy, and rather

rusty gun lay beside her; a heap of cheap cartridges before her.

She turned, and, catching Marche's eyes, smiled adorably, with a slight

nod of comradeship. Then, the smile still faintly curving her lips, she

crossed her legs in the pit, and, warming her hands in the pockets of

her coat, leaned back, resting against the rail behind.

"You haven't a foot-warmer," he said.

"I'm not cold--only my fingers--a little--stooling those birds."

They spoke in low voices, under their breath.

He fished from his pocket a flat Japanese hand-warmer, lighted the

paper-cased punk, snapped it shut, and passed it to her. But she

demurred.

"You need it yourself."

"No, I'm all right. Please take it."

So she shyly took it, dropped it into her pocket, and rested her

shapely little hand on it. "How delightful!" she said presently,

shifting it to the other pocket. "Don't you really need it, Mr. Marche?"

"No. Does it warm you?"

"It is delicious. I _was_ a little chilled." She drew out one bare hand

and looked at it thoughtfully. Then, with a little sigh, and quite

unconscious of his gaze, she touched her lips to the wind-roughened

skin, as though in atonement for her maltreatment of herself.

Even as it now was the shape and beauty of the hand held Marche

fascinated; it was so small, yet so firm and strong and competent, so

full of youthful character, such a delicately fashioned little hand,

and so pathetic, somehow--this woman's hand, with its fineness of

texture and undamaged purity under the chapped and cruelly bruised,

tender skin.

She pocketed it again, looking out from under the wind-blown hair

clustering from the edge of her shooting hood. "Blue-bird weather," she

said, in her low and very sweet voice. "If no birds swing in by ten

o'clock we might as well sleep until four."

Marche leaned forward and scanned the water and sky alternately. Nothing

stirred, save their lazily preening decoys. Uncle Dudley was still

conversing with his wife at intervals; the swans and the cygnets fed or

worried their leash snaps; the ducks paddled, or dozed on the stools,

balanced on one leg.

Far away, on Golden Bar, half a thousand wild geese floated, feeding;

beyond, like snowflakes dotting the water, a few wild swans drifted.

There were ducks, too, off Starfish Island again, but nothing flying in

the blue except a slow hawk or some wandering gull, or now and then an

eagle--sometimes a mature bird, in all the splendor of white head and

tail, sometimes a young bird, seemingly larger, and all gray from crest

to shank.

Once an eagle threatened the decoys, and Uncle Dudley swore so lustily

at him, and every duck and goose set up such a clamor, that Molly Herold

picked up her gun for the emergency. But the magnificent eagle, beating

up into the wind with bronze wings aglisten, suddenly sheered off; and,

as he passed, Marche could see his bold head turn toward the blind where

the sun had flashed him its telegraphic warning on the barrel of Molly's

lifted gun.

"Fine!" he whispered. "Splendid! I'm glad you didn't kill him."

"I'm glad I didn't have to," she said.

"Do you think you could have?"

She turned toward him, wondering whether he might be serious; then

smiled as he smiled.

At the same instant, coming apparently from nowhere, four canvasbacks

suddenly appeared over the clamoring decoys, so close in that, as they

came driving by the blind and rose slightly, wings bowed, Marche could

almost see their beady little eyes set in the chestnut red of the

turning heads. Mechanically his gun spoke twice; rap-rap, echoed Miss

Herold's gun, and splash! splash! down whirled two gray-and-red ducks;

then a third, uncertain, slowed down, far out beyond the decoys, and

slanted sideways to the water. The fourth went on.

"Duffer that I am," said Marche good-humoredly. "That was a clean double

of yours, Miss Herold!--clean-cut work."

She said, slightly knitting her straight brows: "I should have crossed

two of them and killed the one you missed. I think I'd better get the

boat."

"No, I'll go out after that kicker," he said, ashamed of his slovenly

work.

Five minutes later he returned with his kicker and her two ducks--great,

fat, heavy canvasbacks, beautiful in their red, black, and drab plumage.

"What about blue-bird weather, now?" he laughed.