Eve's cheeks showed a deep rose bloom; she was no longer the snow-white
woman whom near-sighted Miss Sabrina had furtively scanned upon her
arrival at Romney six months before. She was still markedly erect, but
her step had become less confident, her despotic manner had disappeared.
Often now she was irresolute, and she had grown awkward--a thing new
with her; she did not know how to arrange her smallest action, hampered
by this new quality.
But since the terrible hour when Ferdie had appeared at the end of the
corridor with his candle held aloft and his fixed eyes, life with her
had rushed along so rapidly that she had seemed to be powerless in its
current. The first night in Paul's cottage, in her little room next to
Cicely's, she had spent hours on her knees by the bedside pouring forth
in a flood of gratitude to Some One, Somewhere--she knew no formulas of
prayer--that she had been delivered from the horror that had held her
speechless through all the long journey. Ferdie was living! She repeated
it over and over--Ferdie was living!
At the time there had been no plan; she had stepped back into her room
to get the pistol, not with any purpose of attack, but in order not to
be without some means of defence. The pistol was one of Jack's, which
she had found and taken possession of soon after her arrival,
principally because it had been his; she had seen him with it often;
with it he himself had taught her to shoot. Then at the last, when
Jack's poor little boy had climbed up by the boat's seat, and the madman
had made that spring towards him, then she had--done what she did. She
had done it mechanically; it had seemed the only thing to do.
But, once away, the horror had come, as it always does and must, when by
violence a human life has been taken. She had dropped the pistol into
the Sound, but she could not drop the ghastly picture of the dark figure
on the sand, with its arms making two or three spasmodic motions, then
becoming suddenly still. Was he dead? If he was, she, Eve Bruce, was a
murderer, a creature to be imprisoned for life,--hanged. How people
would shrink from her if they knew! And how monstrous it was that she
should touch Cicely! Yet she must. Cain, where is thy brother? And the
Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. Would
it come to this, that she should be forced at last to take her own life,
in order to be free from the horror of murder? These were the constant
thoughts of that journey northward, without one moment's respite day or
night.
But deliverance had come: he was alive! God was good after all, God was
kind; he had lifted from her this pall of death. He was alive! He was
alive!
"Oh, I did not do it! I am innocent! That figure has gone from the sand;
it got up and walked away!" She laughed in the relief, the reaction, and
buried her face in the pillow to stifle it. "Cicely will not know what I
am laughing at; she will wonder. I need never tell her anything now,
because the only men who were suspected have got safely away. She is
safe, little Jack is safe, and Ferdie is not dead; he is alive--alive!"
So swept on through the night the tide of her immense joy. For the next
day and the next, for many days after, this joy surged within her, its
outward expression being the flush, and the brilliant light in her eyes.
Eve Bruce had a strongly truthful nature, she was frank not only with
others, but with herself; she possessed the unusual mental quality
(unusual in a woman) of recognizing facts, whether they were agreeable
or not; of living without illusions. This had helped to give her,
perhaps, her brusque manner, with its absence of gentleness, its scanty
sweetness. With her innate truthfulness, it was not long before this
woman perceived that there was another cause contributing to the
excitement that was quickening her breath and making life seem new. The
discovery had come suddenly.
It had been arranged that on a certain day they should walk out to the
mine, Paul, the judge, Hollis, and herself. When the time came, Hollis
appeared alone, Paul was too busy to leave the office. They walked out
to the mine. But Eve felt her feet dragging, she was unaccountably
depressed. Upon her return, as she came in sight of the cottage, she
remembered how happy she had been there the day before, and for many
days. What had changed? Had she not the same unspeakable great cause for
joy? For what reason did the day seem dull and the sky dark? And then
the truth showed itself: it was because Paul Tennant was not there;
nothing else.
Another woman would have veiled it, would not have acknowledged the fact
even to herself; for women have miraculous power of really believing
only what they wish to believe; for many women facts, taken alone, do
not exist. But Eve had no such endowments. She had reached her room; she
pushed to the door and stood there motionless; after two or three
minutes she sank into the nearest chair; here she sat without stirring
for some time. Then she rose, went down the stairs, and out again. It
was six o'clock, but there were still two hours of daylight; she hurried
towards the nearest border of forest, and, just within its fringe, she
began walking rapidly to and fro, her hands, clasped together, hanging
before her, her eyes on the ground. She did not come back until
nightfall.
As she entered she met Paul.
"I was coming to hunt for you. Where have you been?" He spoke with
surprise.
Eve looked at him once. Then she turned away. What a change in herself!
Now she understood Cicely. Now she understood--yes, she understood
everything--the things she had always despised--pettiness, jealousy,
impossible hopes, disgrace, shame.
"I was afraid Cicely would be alarmed," Paul went on.
And Eve was not offended that it was Cicely of whom he was thinking. It
had not yet occurred to her that he could think of her.
She went in search of Cicely, who had nothing to say to her; then,
excusing herself, she retreated to her room. Here she took off her dress
and began to unbraid her hair. Then the thought came to her that Paul
would go to the parlor about this time, that he would play a game of
chess, perhaps, with the judge; hastily repairing the disorder she had
made, she rearranged the braids, felt in the rough closet for her
evening shoes, put them on, and went down-stairs again with rapid step.
Cicely made no remark as she came in; Paul and the judge were playing
their game, with Hollis looking on. Eve took a book and sat reading, or
apparently reading, at some distance. "Oh, how abject this is! How
childish, how sickening!" Anger against herself rose hotly; under its
sting she felt her strength returning. She sat there as long as the
others did. "I will not make a second scene by going out" (but no one
had noticed her first). She answered Paul's good-night coldly. But when
she was back in her room again, when there was no more escape from its
four walls until morning, then she found herself without defences,
without pretexts, face to face with the fact that she loved this man,
this Paul Tennant, with all her heart. It was a surprise as great as if
she had suddenly become blind, or deaf, or mad--"stricken of God," as
people call it. "I am stricken. But I am not sure it is of God!" That
she, no longer a girl, after all these years untouched by such
feelings--that she, with her clear vision and strong will (she had
always been so proud of her will), should be led captive in this way by
a stranger who cared nothing for her, who did not even wish to
capture--it was a sort of insanity. She paced her room to and fro as she
had paced the fringe of woods. She stretched out her hands and looked at
them as though they had been the hands of some one else; she struck one
of them upon her bare arm; she was so humiliated that she must hurt
something; that something should be herself. "If he should ever care for
me, I would refuse him," she repeated, in bitter triumph. Immediately
the thought followed, "He will never care!"
"I do not love him really," she kept repeating. "I am not well; it will
pass." But while she was saying this, there came a glow that
contradicted her, a glow before whose new sway she was helpless. "Oh, I
do! I loved him the first day I saw him. What is that old phrase?--I
love the ground he walks on." She buried her face in her hands.
"How strange! I am happier than I have ever been in my life before; I
didn't know that there was such happiness!" A door seemed to open,
showing a way out of her trouble, a way which led to a vision of subtle
sweetness--her life through the future with this passion hidden like a
treasure in her heart, no one to know it, no one to suspect its
existence. "As I am to be nothing to him, as I wish to be nothing to
him, I shall not care whom _he_ loves; that is nothing to me." Upon this
basis she would arrange her life.
But it is not so easy to arrange life. Almost immediately she began to
suffer, a species of suffering, too, to which she was unused: trifles
annoyed her like innumerable stings--she was not able to preserve her
calm; as regarded anything important, she could have been herself, or so
she imagined; but little things irritated her, and the days were full of
little things. She rebelled against this nervousness, but she could not
subdue it; and gradually the beautiful vision of her life, as she had
imagined it, faded away miserably in a cloud of petty exasperations and
despair. After wretched hours, unable to endure her humiliation longer,
she resolved to conquer herself at any cost, to set herself free; she
could not go away, because she would not leave Cicely; there was still
her brother's child; but here, on the spot, she would overcome this
feeling that had taken possession of her and changed her so that she did
not know herself. "I _will_!" she said. It was a vow; her will was the
strongest force of her being.
This very will blinded her, she was too sure of it. She was in earnest
about wishing and intending to win in her great battle. But she forgot
the details.
These are some of the details:
The one time of day when Paul was neither at the mine nor in his office
was at sunset; twice she went through a chain of reasoning to prove to
herself that she had a necessary errand at that hour at one of the
stores; both times she met him. She had heard Paul say that he liked to
see women sew; she was no needlewoman; but presently she began to
embroider an apron for Jack (with very poor success). Paul was no
reader; he looked through the newspapers once a day, and when it rained
very hard in the evening, and there was nothing else to do, occasionally
he took up his one book; for he had but one, at least so Hollis
declared; at any rate he read but one; this one was Gibbon. The only
edition of the great history in the little book-store of Port aux Pins
was a miserably printed copy in paper covers. But a lady bought it in
spite of its blurred type.
Finally this same lady went to church. It was on a Sunday afternoon, the
second service; she came in late, and took a seat in the last pew. When
had Eve Bruce been to church before? Paul went once in a while. And it
was when she saw his head towering above the heads of the shorter people
about him, as the congregation rose to repeat the creed--it was then
suddenly that the veil was lifted and she saw the truth: this was what
she had come for.
She did not try to deny it, she comprehended her failure. After this she
ceased to struggle, she only tried to be quiet. She lived from day to
day, from hour to hour; it was a compromise. "But I shall not be here
long; something will separate us; soon, perhaps in a few weeks, it will
have come to an end, and then I may never see him again." So she
reasoned, passively.
About this time Cicely fell ill. The Port aux Pins doctor had at length
given a name to her listlessness and her constantly increasing physical
weakness; he called it nervous prostration (one of the modern titles
for grief, or an aching heart).
"What do you advise?" Paul had asked.
"Take her away."
Two days later they were living under tents at Jupiter Light.
"We cannot get off this evening; it is perfectly impossible," the judge
had declared, bewildered by Paul's sudden decision, not knowing as yet
whether he agreed with it or not, and furthermore harried by the arrival
of tents, provisions, Indians, cooks, and kettles, the kettles invading
even the dining-room, his especial retreat.
"Oh, we shall go; never you fear," said Hollis, who was hard at work
boxing up an iron bedstead. "At the last moment Paul will drive us all
on board like a flock of sheep."
And, at nine o'clock that night, they did embark, the judge, who had
given up comprehending anything, walking desperately behind the others;
Hollis, weighed down with rods and guns, and his own clothing escaping
from newspapers; a man cook; a band of Indians; Porley and Jack; Eve;
and, last of all, Cicely, tenderly carried in Paul's arms. In a week the
complete change, the living under canvas in the aromatic air of the
pines, produced a visible effect; Cicely began to recover her lost
vitality; the alarming weakness disappeared. Every day there came her
letter or despatch, one of the Indians going fifteen miles for it, in a
canoe; the message was always favorable, Ferdie was constantly
improving. All was arranged, Paul was to go southward in July. He and
Cicely had frequent talks (talks which Paul tried to make as cheerful as
possible); perhaps, next winter, they should all be living together at
Port aux Pins; that is, in case it should be thought best to give up
Valparaiso, after all. Cicely read and re-read the letters; she always
kept the last one under her dress on her heart; for the rest she floated
in the canoe, and she played with Jack, who bloomed with health to that
extent that he was called the Porpoise. The judge, happy in the
improvement of his darling little girl, fished; snarled with Hollis;
then fished again. Hollis, always attired in his black coat, showed
positive genius in the matter of broiling. And Paul came and went as he
was able. As he could not be absent long from the mine, he made the
journey to Port aux Pins every three days, leaving Hollis in charge at
the camp during his absence. One day Hollis also was obliged to go to
Port aux Pins. And while he was there he attended an evening party. This
entertainment he described for Cicely's amusement upon his return. For
she was the central person to them all; they gathered round her, they
obeyed eagerly her slightest wish; when she laughed, they laughed also,
they were so glad to see life once more animating her white little face;
it was for this that Hollis prolonged his story, and quoted Shakespeare;
he would have stood on his head if it would have made her smile.
A part of Hollis's description: "So then her sister Idora started on the
piano an accompaniment that went like this: _Bang!_ la-la-la. _Bang!_
la-la-la, and Miss Parthenia, she began singing:
_'O why-ee should the white man follow my path_
_Like the hound on the tiger's track?'_
And then, with her hand over her mouth, she gave us a regular Indian
war-whoop."
"How I wish I had been there!" said Cicely, with sudden laughter.
"She'll whoop for you at any time; proud to," continued Hollis. "Well,
after the song was over, Mother Drone she sat back in her chair, and she
loosened her cap-strings on the sly. Says she: 'I hope the girls won't
see me doing this, Mr. Hollis; they think tarlatan strings tied under
the chin for a widow are so sweet. I told them I'd been a widow fifteen
years without 'em; but they say, now they've grown up, I ought to have
strings for their sakes, and be more prominent. Is Idora out on the
steps with Wolf Roth? Would you mind peeking?' So I peeked. But Wolf
Roth was there alone. 'He don't look dangerous,' I remarked, when I'd
loped back. Says she: 'He'd oughter, then. And he would, too, if he knew
it was me he sees when he comes serenading. I tap the girls on the
shoulder: 'Girls? Wolf Roth and his guitar!' But you might as well tap
the seven sleepers! So I have to cough, and I have to glimp, and Wolf
Roth--he little thinks it's ma'am!"
"Oh, what is glimp?" said Cicely, still laughing.
"It's showing a light through the blinds, very faint and shy," answered
Hollis.
_"'Thou know'st the mask of night is on me face,_
_Else would a maid-en blush bepaint me cheek,'"_
he quoted, gravely. "That's about the size of it, I guess."
Having drawn the last smile from Cicely, he went off to his tent, and
presently he and the judge started for the nearest trout-brook together.
Paul came up from the beach. "There's an Indian village two miles above
here, Cicely; do you care to have a look at it? I could take you and
Miss Bruce in the little canoe."
But Cicely was tired: often now, after a sudden fit of merriment (which
seemed to be a return, though infinitely fainter, of her old wild
moods), she would look exhausted. "I think I will swing in the hammock,"
she said.
"Will you go, then, Miss Bruce?" Paul asked, carelessly.
"Thanks; I have something to do."
Half an hour later, Paul having gone off by himself, she was sitting on
a fallen tree on the shore, at some distance from the tents, when his
canoe glided suddenly into view, coming round a near point; he beached
it and sprang ashore.
"You surely have not had time to go to that village?" she said, rising.
"Did I say I was going alone? Apparently what you had to do was not so
very important," he added, smiling.
"Yes, I was occupied," she answered.
"We can go still, if you like; there is time."
"Thank you;--no."
Paul gave her a look. She fancied that she saw in it regret. "Is it very
curious--your village? Perhaps it would be amusing, after all."
He helped her into the canoe, and the next moment they were gliding up
the lake. The village was a temporary one, twenty or thirty wigwams in a
grove. Only the women and children were at home, the sweet-voiced young
squaws in their calico skirts and blankets, the queer little mummy-like
pappooses, the half-naked children. They brought out bows and arrows to
sell, agates which they had found on the beach, Indian sugar in little
birch-bark boxes, quaintly ornamented.
"Tell them to gather some bluebells for me," said Eve. Her face had an
expression of joyousness; every now and then she laughed like a merry
girl.
Paul repeated her request in the Chippewa tongue, and immediately all
the black-eyed children sallied forth, returning with large bunches of
the fragile-stemmed flowers, so that Eve's hands were full. She
lingered, sitting on the side of an old canoe; she distributed all the
small coins she had. Finally they were afloat again; she wondered who
had suggested it. "There's a gleam already," she said, as they passed
Jupiter Light. "Some day I should like to go out there."
"I can take you now," Paul answered. And he sent the canoe flying
towards the reef.
She had made no protest. "He wished to go," she said to herself,
contentedly.
The distance was greater than she had supposed; it was twilight when
they reached the miniature beach.
"Shall we make them let us in, and climb up to the top?" suggested Paul.