For a year the tide had ebbed and flowed on the Dedlow Marsh unheeded
before the sealed and sightless windows of the "Kingfisher's Nest."
Since the young birds had flown to Logport, even the Indian caretakers
had abandoned the piled dwelling for their old nomadic haunts in the
"bresh." The high spring tide had again made its annual visit to the
little cemetery of drift-wood, and, as if recognizing another wreck in
the deserted home, had hung a few memorial offerings on the blackened
piles, softly laid a garland of grayish drift before it, and then
sobbed itself out in the salt grass.
From time to time the faint echoes of the Culpeppers' life at Logport
reached the upland, and the few neighbors who had only known them by
hearsay shook their heads over the extravagance they as yet only knew
by report. But it was in the dead ebb of the tide and the waning
daylight that the feathered tenants of the Marsh seemed to voice dismal
prophecies of the ruin of their old master and mistress, and to give
themselves up to gloomiest lamentation and querulous foreboding.
Whether the traditional "bird of the air" had entrusted his secret to a
few ornithological friends, or whether from a natural disposition to
take gloomy views of life, it was certain that at this hour the vocal
expression of the Marsh was hopeless and despairing. It was then that
a dejected plover, addressing a mocking crew of sandpipers on a
floating log, seemed to bewail the fortune that was being swallowed up
by the riotous living and gambling debts of Jim. It was then that the
querulous crane rose, and testily protested against the selling of his
favorite haunt in the sandy peninsula, which only six months of Jim's
excesses had made imperative. It was then that a mournful curlew, who,
with the preface that he had always been really expecting it,
reiterated the story that Jim had been seen more than once staggering
home with nervous hands and sodden features from a debauch with the
younger officers; it was the same desponding fowl who knew that
Maggie's eyes had more than once filled with tears at Jim's failings,
and had already grown more hollow with many watchings. It was a flock
of wrangling teal that screamingly discussed the small scandals,
jealous heart-burnings, and curious backbitings that had attended
Maggie's advent into society. It was the high-flying brent who,
knowing how the sensitive girl, made keenly conscious at every turn of
her defective training and ingenuous ignorance, had often watched their
evening flight with longing gaze, now "honked" dismally at the
recollection. It was at this hour and season that the usual vague
lamentings of Dedlow Marsh seemed to find at last a preordained
expression. And it was at such a time, when light and water were both
fading, and the blackness of the Marsh was once more reasserting
itself, that a small boat was creeping along one of the tortuous
inlets, at times half hiding behind the bank like a wounded bird. As
it slowly penetrated inland it seemed to be impelled by its solitary
occupant in a hesitating uncertain way, as if to escape observation
rather than as if directed to any positive bourn. Stopping beside a
bank of reeds at last, the figure rose stoopingly, and drew a gun from
between its feet and the bottom of the boat. As the light fell upon
its face, it could be seen that it was James Culpepper! James
Culpepper! hardly recognizable in the swollen features, bloodshot eyes,
and tremulous hands of that ruined figure! James Culpepper, only
retaining a single trace of his former self in his look of set and
passionate purpose! And that purpose was to kill himself--to be found
dead, as his father had been before him--in an open boat, adrift upon
the Marsh!
It was not the outcome of a sudden fancy. The idea had first come to
him in a taunting allusion from the drunken lips of one of his ruder
companions, for which he had stricken the offender to the earth. It
had since haunted his waking hours of remorse and hopeless fatuity; it
had seemed to be the one relief and atonement he could make his devoted
sister; and, more fatuous than all, it seemed to the miserable boy the
one revenge he would take upon the faithless coquette, who for a year
had played with his simplicity, and had helped to drive him to the
distraction of cards and drink. Only that morning Colonel Preston had
forbidden him the house; and now it seemed to him the end had come. He
raised his distorted face above the reedy bank for a last tremulous and
half-frightened glance at the landscape he was leaving forever. A
glint in the western sky lit up the front of his deserted dwelling in
the distance, abreast of which the windings of the inlet had
unwittingly led him. As he looked he started, and involuntarily
dropped into a crouching attitude. For, to his superstitious terror,
the sealed windows of his old home were open, the bright panes were
glittering with the fading light, and on the outer gallery the familiar
figure of his sister stood, as of old, awaiting his return! Was he
really going mad, or had this last vision of his former youth been
purposely vouchsafed him?
But, even as he gazed, the appearance of another figure in the
landscape beyond the house proved the reality of his vision, and as
suddenly distracted him from all else. For it was the apparition of a
man on horseback approaching the house from the upland; and even at
that distance he recognized its well-known outlines. It was Calvert!
Calvert the traitor! Calvert, the man whom he had long suspected as
being the secret lover and destined husband of Cicely Preston!
Calvert, who had deceived him with his calm equanimity and his affected
preference for Maggie, to conceal his deliberate understanding with
Cicely. What was he doing here? Was he a double traitor, and now
trying to deceive HER--as he had him? And Maggie here! This sudden
return--this preconcerted meeting. It was infamy!
For a moment he remained stupefied, and then, with a mechanical
instinct, plunged his head and face in the lazy-flowing water, and then
once again rose cool and collected. The half-mad distraction of his
previous resolve had given way to another, more deliberate, but not
less desperate determination. He knew now WHY he came there--WHY he
had brought his gun--why his boat had stopped when it did!
Lying flat in the bottom, he tore away fragments of the crumbling bank
to fill his frail craft, until he had sunk it to the gunwale, and below
the low level of the Marsh. Then, using his hands as noiseless
paddles, he propelled this rude imitation of a floating log slowly past
the line of vision, until the tongue of bushes had hidden him from
view. With a rapid glance at the darkening flat, he then seized his
gun, and springing to the spongy bank, half crouching half crawling
through reeds and tussocks, he made his way to the brush. A foot and
eye less experienced would have plunged its owner helpless in the black
quagmire. At one edge of the thicket he heard hoofs trampling the
dried twigs. Calvert's horse was already there, tied to a skirting
alder.
He ran to the house, but, instead of attracting attention by ascending
the creaking steps, made his way to the piles below the rear gallery
and climbed to it noiselessly. It was the spot where the deserter had
ascended a year ago, and, like him, he could see and hear all that
passed distinctly. Calvert stood near the open door as if departing.
Maggie stood between him and the window, her face in shadow, her hands
clasped tightly behind her. A profound sadness, partly of the dying
day and waning light, and partly of some vague expiration of their own
sorrow, seemed to encompass them. Without knowing why, a strange
trembling took the place of James Culpepper's fierce determination, and
a film of moisture stole across his staring eyes.
"When I tell you that I believe all this will pass, and that you will
still win your brother back to you," said Calvert's sad but clear
voice, "I will tell you why--although, perhaps, it is only a part of
that confidence you command me to withhold. When I first saw you, I
myself had fallen into like dissolute habits; less excusable than he,
for I had some experience of the world and its follies. When I met
YOU, and fell under the influence of your pure, simple, and healthy
life; when I saw that isolation, monotony, misunderstanding, even the
sense of superiority to one's surroundings could be lived down and
triumphed over, without vulgar distractions or pitiful ambitions; when
I learned to love you--hear me out, Miss Culpepper, I beg you--you
saved ME--I, who was nothing to you, even as I honestly believe you
will still save your brother, whom you love."
"How do you know I didn't RUIN him?" she said, turning upon him
bitterly. "How do you know that it wasn't to get rid of OUR monotony,
OUR solitude that I drove him to this vulgar distraction, this
pitiful--yes, you were right--pitiful ambition?"
"Because it isn't your real nature," he said quietly.
"My real nature," she repeated with a half savage vehemence that seemed
to be goaded from her by his very gentleness, "my real nature! What
did HE--what do YOU know of it?--My real nature!--I'll tell you what it
was," she went on passionately. "It was to be revenged on you all for
your cruelty, your heartlessness, your wickedness to me and mine in the
past. It was to pay you off for your slanders of my dead father--for
the selfishness that left me and Jim alone with his dead body on the
Marsh. That was what sent me to Logport--to get even with you--to--to
fool and flaunt you! There, you have it now! And now that God has
punished me for it by crushing my brother--you--you expect me to let
you crush ME too."
"But," he said eagerly, advancing toward her, "you are wronging me--you
are wronging yourself, cruelly."
"Stop," she said, stepping back, with her hands still locked behind
her. "Stay where you are. There! That's enough!" She drew herself
up and let her hands fall at her side. "Now, let us speak of Jim," she
said coldly.
Without seeming to hear her, he regarded her for the first time with
hopeless sadness.
"Why did you let my brother believe you were his rival with Cicely
Preston?" she asked impatiently.
"Because I could not undeceive him without telling him I hopelessly
loved his sister. You are proud, Miss Culpepper," he said, with the
first tinge of bitterness in his even voice. "Can you not understand
that others may be proud too?"
"No," she said bluntly; "it is not pride but weakness. You could have
told him what you knew to be true: that there could be nothing in
common between her folk and such savages as we; that there was a gulf
as wide as that Marsh and as black between our natures, our training
and theirs, and even if they came to us across it, now and then, to
suit their pleasure, light and easy as that tide--it was still there to
some day ground and swamp them! And if he doubted it, you had only to
tell him your own story. You had only to tell him what you have just
told me--that you yourself, an officer and a gentleman, thought you
loved me, a vulgar, uneducated, savage girl, and that I, kinder to you
than you to me or him, made you take it back across that tide, because
I couldn't let you link your life with me, and drag you in the mire."
"You need not have said that, Miss Culpepper," returned Calvert with
the same gentle smile, "to prove that I am your inferior in all but one
thing."
"And that?" she said quickly.
"Is my love."
His gentle face was as set now as her own as he moved back slowly
towards the door. There he paused.
"You tell me to speak of Jim, and Jim only. Then hear me. I believe
that Miss Preston cares for him as far as lies in her young and giddy
nature. I could not, therefore, have crushed HIS hope without
deceiving him, for there are as cruel deceits prompted by what we call
reason as by our love. If you think that a knowledge of this plain
truth would help to save him, I beg you to be kinder to him than you
have been to me,--or even, let me dare to hope, to YOURSELF."
He slowly crossed the threshold, still holding his cap lightly in his
hand.
"When I tell you that I am going away to-morrow on a leave of absence,
and that in all probability we may not meet again, you will not
misunderstand why I add my prayer to the message your friends in
Logport charged me with. They beg that you will give up your idea of
returning here, and come back to them. Believe me, you have made
yourself loved and respected there, in spite--I beg pardon--perhaps I
should say BECAUSE of your pride. Good-night and good-bye."
For a single instant she turned her set face to the window with a
sudden convulsive movement, as if she would have called him back, but
at the same moment the opposite door creaked and her brother slipped
into the room. Whether a quick memory of the deserter's entrance at
that door a year ago had crossed her mind, whether there was some
strange suggestion in his mud-stained garments and weak deprecating
smile, or whether it was the outcome of some desperate struggle within
her, there was that in her face that changed his smile into a
frightened cry for pardon, as he ran and fell on his knees at her feet.
But even as he did so her stern look vanished, and with her arm around
him she bent over him and mingled her tears with his.
"I heard it all, Mag dearest! All! Forgive me! I have been
crazy!--wild!--I will reform!--I will be better! I will never disgrace
you again, Mag! Never, never! I swear it!"
She reached down and kissed him. After a pause, a weak boyish smile
struggled into his face.
"You heard what he said of HER, Mag. Do you think it might be true?"
She lifted the damp curls from his forehead with a sad half-maternal
smile, but did not reply.
"And Mag, dear, don't you think YOU were a little--just a little--hard
on HIM? No! Don't look at me that way, for God's sake! There, I
didn't mean anything. Of course you knew best. There, Maggie dear,
look up. Hark there! Listen, Mag, do!"
They lifted their eyes to the dim distance seen through the open door.
Borne on the fading light, and seeming to fall and die with it over
marsh and river, came the last notes of the bugle from the Fort.
"There! Don't you remember what you used to say, Mag?"
The look that had frightened him had quite left her face now.
"Yes," she smiled, laying her cold cheek beside his softly. "Oh yes!
It was something that came and went, 'Like a song'--'Like a song.'"