PAUL came back to Port aux Pins five days before the time of his
departure for the South. Cicely was still there. She had refused to go
to St. Paul. "The only Paul I care for is the one here. What an i-dea,
Eve, that I should choose just this moment for a trip! It looks as
though you were trying to keep me away from him."
"I'm not trying; it's Paul," Eve might have answered.
"It must be curious to be such a cold sort of person as you are," Cicely
went on, looking at her. "You have only one feeling that ever gives you
any trouble, haven't you? That's anger."
"I am never angry with you," Eve answered, with the humility which she
always showed when Cicely made her cutting little speeches.
Paul had been right. As the time of his departure for Romney drew near,
Cicely grew restless. She was seized with fits of wild weeping. At last,
when there were only two days left, Paul proposed a drive--anything to
change, even if only upon the surface, the current of her thoughts. "We
will go to Betsy Lake, and pay a visit to the antiquities."
The mine at Betsy Lake--the Lac aux Becs-Scies of the early Jesuit
explorers--had been abandoned. Recently traces of work there in
prehistoric times had been discovered, with primitive tools which
excited interest in the minds of antiquarians. The citizens of Port aux
Pins were not antiquarians; they said "Mound Builders;" and troubled
themselves no more about it.
"We had better spend the night at the butter-woman's," Paul suggested.
"It is too far for one day."
Eve did not go with the party. They had started at three o'clock,
intending to visit a hill from which there was an extensive view, before
going on to the butter-woman's farm-house. At four she herself went out
for a solitary walk.
As she was passing a group of wretched shanties, beyond the outskirts of
the town, a frightened woman came out of one of them, calling loudly,
"Mrs. Halley! oh, Mrs. _Halley_, your _Lyddy is dying!_"
A second woman, who was hanging out clothes, dropped the garment she had
in her hand and ran within; Eve followed her. A young girl, who appeared
to be in a spasm, occupied the one bed, a poor one; the mother rushed
to her. In a few minutes the danger was over, and the girl fell into a
heavy sleep.
"That Mrs. Sullivan--she's too sprightly," said Mrs. Halley, after she
had dismissed her frightened neighbor. "I just invited her to sit here
_trenquilly_ while I put out me clothes, when lo! she begins and screams
like mad. She's had no education, that's plain. There's nothing the
matter with my Lyddy except that she's delicate, and as soon as she's a
little better I'm going to have her take music lessons on the peanner."
Eve looked at Mrs. Halley's ragged, wet dress, and at the wan, pinched
face of the sleeping girl. "It is a pity you have to leave her," she
said. "Couldn't you get somebody to do your washing?"
"I take in washing, miss; I'm a lady-laundress. Only the best; I never
wash for the boats."
"How much do you earn a week?"
"Oh, a tidy sum," answered Mrs. Halley. Then, seeing that Eve had taken
out her purse, her misery overcame her pride, and she burst forth,
suddenly: "_Never_ more than three dollars, miss, with me slaving from
morning to night. And I've five children besides poor Lyddy there."
Eve gave her a five-dollar bill.
"Oh, may the Lord bless you!" she began to cry. "And me with me skirt
all wet, and the house not clean, when the chariot of the Lord descended
upon me!" She sank into a chair, her toil-worn hands over her face, her
tired back bent forward, relaxed at last, and resting.
Eve pursued her investigations; she sent a boy to town for provisions,
and waited to see a meal prepared. Mrs. Halley, still wet and ragged,
but now refreshed by joy, moved about rapidly; at last there was nothing
more to do but to sit down and wait. "She was the prettiest of all my
children," she remarked, indicating the sleeping girl with a motion of
her head.
"She is still pretty," Eve answered.
"Yet you never saw _her_ making eyes at gentlemen like some; there's a
great deal of making eyes at Potterpins. Rose Bonham, now--she got a
silk dress out of Mr. Tennant no longer ago as last March."
"Mr. Tennant?"
"Yes; the gentleman who superintends the mine. Not that I have anything
to say against him; gentlemen has their priviluges. All I say
is--_girls_ hasn't!"