Blue-bird weather continued. Every day for a week Marche and Molly
Herold put out for Foam Island under summer skies, and with a soft wind
filling the sail; and in all the water-world there was no visible sign
of winter, save the dead reeds on muddy islands and the far and wintry
menace of the Atlantic crashing icily beyond the eastern dunes.
Few ducks and no geese or swans came to the blind. There was nothing
for them to do except to talk together or sit dozing in the sun. And,
imperceptibly, between them the elements of a pretty intimacy unfolded
like spring buds on unfamiliar branches; but what they might develop
into he did not know, and she had not even considered.
She had a quaint capacity for sleeping in the sunshine while he was away
on the island prowling hopefully after black ducks. And one morning,
when he returned to find her asleep at her post, a bunch of widgeon left
the stools right under her nose before he had a chance to shoot.
She did not awake. The sun fell warmly upon her, searching the
perfections of the childlike face and throat, gilding the palm of one
little, sun-tanned hand lying, partly open, on her knee. A spring-like
wind stirred a single strand of bright hair; lips slightly parted, she
lay there, face to the sky, and Marche thought that he had never looked
upon anything in all the world more pure and peaceful.
At noon the girl had not awakened. But something in John B. Marche had.
He looked in horrified surprise at the decoys, then looked at Molly
Herold; then he gazed in profound astonishment at Uncle Dudley, who made
a cryptic remark to the wife of his bosom, and then tipped upside down.
Marche examined the sky and water so carefully that he did not see them;
then, sideways, and with an increasing sensation of consternation, he
looked again at the sleeping girl.
His was not even a friendly gaze, now; there was more than dawning alarm
in it--an irritated curiosity which grew more intense as the seconds
throbbed out, absurdly timed by a most remarkable obligato from his
heart.
He gazed stonily upon this stranger into whose life he had drifted only
a week before, whose slumbers he felt that he was now unwarrantedly
invading with a mental presumption that scared him; and yet, as often as
he looked elsewhere, he looked back at her again, confused by the slowly
dawning recognition of a fascination which he was utterly powerless to
check or even control.
One thing was already certain; he wanted to know her, to learn from her
own lips intimately about herself, about her thoughts, her desires, her
tastes, her aspirations--even her slightest fancies.
Absorbed, charmed by her quiet breathing, fascinated into immobility, he
sat there gazing at her, trying to reconcile the steadily strengthening
desire to know her with what he already knew of her--of this sleeping
stranger, this shabby child of a poor man, dressed in the boots and
shooting coat of that wretchedly poor man--his own superintendent, a
sick man whom he had never even seen.
What manner of man could her father be--this man Herold--to have a child
of this sort, this finely molded, fine-grained, delicate, exquisitely
made girl, lying asleep here in a wind-stirred blind, with the Creator's
own honest sun searching out and making triumphant a beauty such as his
wise and city-worn eyes had never encountered, even under the mercies of
softened candlelight.
An imbecile repetition of speech kept recurring and even stirring his
lips, "She'd make them all look like thirty cents." And he colored
painfully at the crudeness of his obsessing thoughts, angrily, after a
moment, shaking them from him.
A cartridge rolled from the shelf and splashed into the pit water; the
girl unclosed her gray eyes, met his gaze, smiled dreamily; then,
flushing a little, sat up straight.
"Fifteen widgeon went off when I returned to the blind," he said,
unsmiling.
"I _beg_ your pardon. I am--I am terribly sorry," she stammered, with a
vivid blush of confusion.
But the first smile from her unclosing eyes had already done damage
enough; the blush merely disorganized a little more what was already
chaos in a young man's mind.
"Has--has anything else come in to the stools?" she asked timidly.
"No," he said, relenting.
But he was wrong. Something _had_ come into the blind--a winged,
fluttering thing, out of the empyrean--and even Uncle Dudley had not
seen or heard it, and never a honk or a quack warned anybody, or
heralded the unseen coming of the winged thing.
Marche sat staring out across the water.
"I--am so very sorry," repeated the girl, in a low voice. "Are you
offended with me?"
He turned and looked at her, and spoke steadily enough: "Of course I'm
not. I was glad you had a nap. There has been nothing doing--except
those stupid widgeon--not a feather stirring."
"Then you are not angry with me?"
"Why, you absurd girl!" he said, laughing and stretching out one hand
to her.
Into her face flashed an exquisite smile; daintily she reached out and
dropped her hand into his. They exchanged a friendly shake, still
smiling.
"All the same," she said, "it was horrid of me. And I think I boasted to
you about my knowledge of a bayman's duties."
"You are all right," he said, "a clean shot, a thoroughbred. I ask no
better comrade than you. I never again shall have such a comrade."
"But--I am your bayman, not your comrade," she exclaimed, forcing a
little laugh. "You'll have better guides than I, Mr. Marche."
"Do you reject the equal alliance I offer, Miss Herold?"
"I?" She flushed. "It is very kind of you to put it that way. But I _am_
only your guide--but it is pleasant to have you speak that way."
"What way?"
"The way you spoke about--your bayman's daughter."
He said, smilingly cool on the surface, but in a chaotic, almost idiotic
inward condition: "I've sat here for days, wishing all the while that I
might really know you. Would you care to let me, Miss Herold?"
"Know me?" she repeated. "I don't think I understand."
"Could you and your father and brother regard me as a guest--as a friend
visiting the family?"
"Why?"
"Because," he said, "I'm the same kind of a man that you are a girl and
that your brother is a boy. Why, you know it, don't you? I know it. I
knew it as soon as I heard you speak, and when your brother came into
the room that first night with his Latin book, and when I saw your
mother's picture. So I know what your father must be. Am I not right?"
She lifted her proud little head and looked at him. "We are what you
think us," she said.
"Then let us stand in that relation, Miss Herold. Will you?"
She looked at him, perplexed, gray eyes clear and thoughtful. "Do you
mean that you really want me for a friend?" she asked calmly, but her
sensitive lip quivered a little.
"Yes."
"Do men make personal friends among their employees? Do they? I ask
because I don't know."
"What was your father before he came here?" he inquired bluntly.
She looked up, startled, then the color came slowly back to her cheeks.
"Isn't that a little impertinent, Mr. Marche?"
"Good heavens! Yes, of course it is!" he exclaimed, turning very red.
"Will you forgive me? I didn't mean to be rude or anything like it! I
merely meant that whatever reverses have happened to bring such a girl
as you down into this God-forsaken place have not altered what you were
and what you are. _Can_ you forgive me?"
"Yes. I'll tell you something. I _wanted_ to be a little more
significant to you than merely a paid guide. So did Jim. We--it is
rather lonely for us. You are the first real man who has come into our
lives in five years. Do you understand, Mr. Marche?"
"Of course I do."
"Are you sure you do? We would like to feel that we could talk to
you--Jim would. It is pleasant to hear a man from the real world
speaking. Not that the people here are unkind, only"--she looked up at
him almost wistfully--"we _are_ like you, Mr. Marche--and we feel
starved, sometimes."
He did not trust himself to speak, even to look at her, just at the
moment. Not heretofore sentimental, but always impressionable, he was
young enough to understand, wise enough not to misunderstand.
After a while, leaning back in the blind, he began, almost casually,
talking about things in that Northern world which had once been hers,
assuming their common interest in matters purely local, in details, of
metropolitan affairs, in the changing physiognomy of the monstrous city,
its superficial aspects, its complex phases.
Timidly, at first, she ventured a question now and then, and after a
while, as her reserve melted, she asked more boldly, and even offered
her own comments on men and things, so that, for the first time, he had
a glimpse of her mind at work--brief, charming surprises, momentary
views of a young girl's eager intelligence, visions of her sad and
solitary self, more guessed at than revealed in anything she said or
left unsaid.
And now they were talking together with free and unfeigned interest and
pleasure, scarcely turning for a glance at the water or sky, save when
old Uncle Dudley made insulting remarks to some slow-drifting gull or
soaring bird of prey.
All the pent-up and natural enthusiasm of years was fairly bubbling to
her lips; all the long-suppressed necessity of speech with one of her
own kind who was not of her own kin.
It seemed as though they conversed and exchanged views on every topic
which concerned heaven and earth, flashing from one subject to another
which had nothing at all to do with anything yet discussed.
Out around them the flat leagues of water turned glassy and calm as a
millpond; the ducks and geese were asleep on their stools; even old
Uncle Dudley stood sentinel, with one leg buried in the downy plumage of
his belly, but his weather eye remained brilliantly open to any stir in
the blue vault above.
[Illustration: "They ate their luncheon there together."]
They ate their luncheon there together, he serving her with hot coffee
from the vacuum bottle, she plying him with sandwiches.
And now, to her beauty was added an adorable friendliness and
confidence, free from the slightest taint of self-consciousness or the
least blemish of coquetry. Intelligent, yet modest to the verge of
shyness, eager yet reserved, warm hearted yet charmingly impersonal with
him, he realized that she was finding, with him, only the happiness of
speech with mankind in the abstract. And so she poured out to him her
heart, long stifled in the abyss of her isolation; and, gazing into his
eyes, she was gazing merely toward all that was bright and happy and
youthful and responsive, and he was its symbol, God-sent from those busy
haunts of men which already, to her, had become only memories of a
blessed vision.
And all the while the undercurrent of his own thoughts ran on
unceasingly: "What can I do for her? I am falling in love--in love,
surely, hopelessly. What can I do for her--for her brother--her father?
I am falling in love--in love--in love."
The long, still, sunny afternoon slipped away. Gradually the water
turned to pearl, inlaid with gold, then with glowing rose. And now, far
to the north, the first thrilling clangor of wild geese, high in the
blue, came to their ears, and they shrank apart and lay back, staring
upward. Nearer, nearer, came the sky trumpets, answering faintly each to
each--nearer, nearer, till high over the blind swept the misty wedge;
and old Uncle Dudley flapped his wings and stretched his neck, calling
up to his wild comrades of earthly delights unnumbered here under the
shadow of death. And every wild goose answered him, and the decoys
flapped and clamored a siren welcome; but the flying wedge glided onward
through the blue.
"They've begun to move," whispered the girl. "But, oh, dear! It is
blue-bird weather. Hark! Do you hear the swans? I can hear swans coming
out of the north!"
Marche could not yet hear them, but the tethered swans and geese heard,
and a magnificent chorus rose from the water. Then, far away as
fairyland, faintly out of the sky, came a new murmur--not the martial
clangor of wild geese, but something wilder, more exquisitely
unearthly--nearer, nearer, enrapturing its weird, celestial beauty. And
now, through the blue, with great, snowy wings slowly beating, the swans
passed over like angels; and like angels passing, hailing each other as
they winged their way, drifting on broad, white pinions, they called,
each to the other in their sweet, unreal voices, gossiping, garrulous,
high in the sky. And far away they floated on until they became only a
silver ribbon undulating against the azure; and even then Marche could
hear the soft tumult of their calling: Heu! Heu! Hiou! Hiou-oo! until
sound and snowy flecks vanished together in mid-heaven.
Again, coming from the far north, the trumpets of the sky squadron were
sounding; they passed, wedge after wedge, sometimes in steady formation,
sometimes like a wavering band of witches, and again in shifting
battalions, sternly officered, passing through intricate aërial
maneuvers, and greeted by Uncle Dudley and the other decoys with wild
beseeching mixed with applause.
Snowy, angelic companies of swans came alternately with the geese; then
a whimpering, whispering flight of wild ducks, water-fowl in thousands
and tens of thousands, rushing onward through the aërial lanes.
But none came to the blind. Occasionally a wedge of geese wavered,
irresolute at the frantic persuasions of Uncle Dudley, but their leader
always dragged them back to their course, and the sagging, hesitating
ranks passed on.
Sometimes, in a nearer flight of swans, some long-necked, snowy creature
would bend its head to look curiously down at the tethered swans on the
water, but always they continued on, settling some two miles south of
Foaming Shoals, until there was half a mile of wild swans afloat there,
looking like a long, low bank of snow, touched with faintest pink by the
glow of the westering sun.