A deep, sweet happiness awoke her ere the earliest robin chirped. Never
since the first pink light touched Eden had such a rosy day dawned for
any maid on earth.
She awoke in love; her enchanted eyes unclosed on a world she had never
known.
Unashamed, she held out her arms to the waking world and spoke her
lover's name aloud. Then the young blood leaped in her, and her eyes
were like stars after a rain.
Oh, she must hasten now, for there was so little time to live in the
world, and every second counted. Healthy of body, wholesome of soul,
innocent and ardent in her new-born happiness, she could scarcely endure
the rush of golden moments lost in an impetuous bath, in twisting up her
bright hair, in the quick knotting of a ribbon, the click of a buckle on
knee and shoe.
Then, as she slipped down the stairs into the darkened hall, trepidation
seized her, for she heard his step.
He came swinging along the hallway; she stood still, trembling. He came
up quickly and took her hands; she did not move; his arm encircled her
waist; he lifted her head; it lay back on his shoulder, and her eyes met
his.
"All day together," he was saying; and her soul leaped to meet his
words, but she could not speak.
He held her at arms'-length, laughing, a little troubled.
"Mystery of mysteries," he said, under his breath; "there is some
blessed Heaven-directed mistake in this. _Is_ there, sweetheart?"
"No," she said.
"And if there was?"
"Can you ask?"
"Then come to breakfast, heart of my heart!--the moments are flying very
swiftly, and there is only this day left--until to-morrow. Listen! I
hear the steward moving like a gray rat in the pantry. Can we endure a
steward in Eden?"
"Only during breakfast," she said, laughing. "I smell the wheaten
flapjacks, and, oh, I am famished!"
There have been other breakfasts--Barmecide breakfasts compared with
their first crust broken in love.
But they ate--oh, indeed, they ate everything before them, from
flapjacks to the piles of little, crisp trout. And they might have
called for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing,
presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford's heart stopped,
and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake.
She, too, suddenly apprehensive, sat rigid, the smile dying out in her
eyes; and when he finally took the envelope and tore it open, she
shivered.
"_Crawford, Sagamore Club_:
"Ophir has consolidated with Steel Plank. You take charge
of London office. Make arrangements to catch steamer leaving
a week from to-morrow. Garcide and I will be at Sagamore
to-night. JAMES J. CRAWFORD."
He sat staring at the telegram; she, vaguely apprehensive for the safety
of this new happiness of hers, clasped her hands tightly in her lap and
waited.
"Any answer, sir?" asked the steward.
Crawford took the offered telegram blank and mechanically wrote:
"Instructions received. Will expect you and Garcide to-night.
JAMES CRAWFORD."
She sat, twisting her fingers on her knees, watching him in growing
apprehension. The steward took the telegram.
Crawford looked at her with a ghastly smile.
They rose together, instinctively, and walked to the porch.
"Oh yes," he said, under his breath, "such happiness was too perfect.
Magic is magic--it never lasts."
"What is it?" she asked, faintly.
He picked up his cap, which was lying on a chair.
"Let's get away, somewhere," he said. "Do you mind coming with
me--alone?"
"No," she said.
There was a canoe on the river-bank below the lawn. He took a paddle and
setting-pole from the veranda wall, and they went down to the river,
side by side.
Heedless of the protests of the scandalized belted kingfishers, they
embarked on Sagamore Water.
The paddle flashed in the sunlight; the quick river caught the blade,
the spray floated shoreward.
V
Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping
water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall
hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water
stretched away into the forest's sombre depths, barred here and there by
dusty sunbeams.
Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an
eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft
swept the yellow gravel.
Knee to knee, vis-a-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of
each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them;
life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of
separation.
"I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow," she said, looking
at him.
The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she would
not permit him to touch her.
"See to what you have brought me!" she said. "I'm utterly unable to live
without you. And now what are you going to do with me?"
Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid it
against his face.
"There is a way," he said.
"A way?"
"Shall I lead? Would you follow?"
"What do you mean?" she asked, amused.
"There is a way," he repeated. "That thread of a brook leads to it."
He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream,
scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its mounds
of moss.
He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoe
swung westward.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked.
But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing
recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.
"If we turned back now," she said, "it would be sunset before we reached
the club."
"What do we care?" he laughed. "Look!"
Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe
shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the
sinking sun.
Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moist
meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the
stream wound in pools of gold.
The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and
he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole
in drops of fire.
There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered on
something that might have been a long reed quivering.
"An old friend fishing yonder," he said, quietly; "I knew he would be
there." He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. "That is the
parson of Foxville," he said. "We will need him before we go to London."
She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaning
flashed out like a sunbeam.
"Do--do you wish--that--_now_?" she faltered.
He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.
"No, no!"--she whispered, with bent head--"I cannot; don't take me
so--so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it."
He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade
and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.
"Oh, we are quite mad," she said, unsteadily.
"I am glad we are," he said.
The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged
blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh
in flickering flight.
The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in
mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into
his pool and swing shoreward.
The parson of Foxville was a very old man--almost too old to fish for
trout.
Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened,
knee-deep in the purple iris.
Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered
at her with his aged eyes, saying, "You are quite mad, my child, and
very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be
much safer if you were married."
Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her
lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.
A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of
moths--that was her fate--with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and
the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional
of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.
And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husband
and shambled away across the meadows.
Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing the
bride of an hour, her head on her husband's knees. The stars came out to
watch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle's wake,
stringing away, twinkling in the starlight.
Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on his
knees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead.
A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyes
like rubies in the dark.
Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windows
of the house glimmered, reflected in the water.
Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, rising
in chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting.
"I've a word to say to you," snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in his
ward's ear--"and another word for your fool of an aunt!"
She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. "What do you
mean?" she stammered; "we--we are married. Will you not speak to my--my
husband?"
A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh.
"You're all right, Jim," said the elder Crawford, slowly. "Ophir Steel
won't slip through your fingers when I'm under the sod. Been married
long, Jim?"