THE LAST.
NOT many days after this, a sad and anxious group of people stood
beside the ruins of the Heron cottage. Joe Brazybone, or the distracted
ghost of him, the trustee, who had thrown over everything else and come
with Joe, and the young missionary. The latter had come to visit the
school only the day after Isla’s flight; what more natural than that
she should join in the search? The trustee had gladly acceded to her
petition that she might accompany him. “Yes, yes!” he said; “a woman is
the thing. A woman can make her listen; poor lost lamb! Miss Stewart
cannot leave her post, and you are the very one we need.”
Here they stood now, looking blankly about them. They had heard, in
the village, of the cottage having been burned soon after the Heron
children left it, by some wanton boys, who had dared each other to eat
their supper in the “Witch-house,” and had built a fire carelessly,
and fled when they saw the mischief they had wrought. No one had seen
Isla since her return, though one and another had made search for
her. Captain Ezekiel spent all the time between the two last trips in
searching and calling. He fancied he saw her once, but, if it were she,
she had fled at sight or sound of him, and it might have been a young
lamb, he said, running quick and light through the woods. He brought
food with him, and left it near the ashes of the cottage; when he came
again, it was gone, and he hoped the child had taken it.
Where should search begin? The trustee looked about him, hopelessly. If
the islanders themselves could not find the lost girl, what could he, a
stranger, hope to do? His face brightened as he turned to look at Joe.
The man was questing here and there like a hound, spying at every tree,
catching at every bent leaf or broken twig. His eyes were closed to
sharp blue points, and their glance pierced where it struck. Suddenly
he stopped and threw up his head, and, in all his distress, the trustee
thought again that the creature wanted a tail to wag, and pitied him
his mistaken humanity.
“She’s passed here!” said Joe, speaking for the first time, in a thick,
husky voice. “She’s passed here, gentleman and preacher, Isly has. I
knowed it before, but I wanted to make surer than sure. Look at here!”
He held up two or three shells strung together, and they recognized
part of a shell bracelet that Isla always wore. Joe’s great hand shook
as he held it up, and the breath hissed through his teeth.
“We’ll find her, sir!” he said, putting the shells in his bosom. “We’ll
find Isly this day. If she’s willin’, that is!” he added, turning upon
them almost savagely. “This hull island is Isly Heron’s own dooryard, I
want ye to understand, gentleman and preacher. She’s to home here, to
go where she likes and do as she likes, and I’d like to see any one try
to hender her. She lets common folks live up to the fur end, and that’s
because she’s the lady she is. Brazybones know, I tell ye; Brazybones
know Herons! And if she don’t want us to find her, why then she won’t
be found. But I hope,—” his voice broke and faltered, and the glare
died out of his eyes,—“I’m in hopes that my young lady will let us pass
the time o’ day with her, seein’ we come so fur, and there’s things old
Joe wants to explain to her. There’s things he’s got to say to her, I
tell ye. There! we’re losin’ time while I’m palaverin’ here. You foller
me, gentleman and lady, and foller soft, if you ever went soft in yer
lives!”
He led the way, the others following, through the little Home Valley,
as Isla called it, through a narrow rocky pass and over a great brown
hill, down into the Dead Valley, which lay beyond. The trustee looked
about him with amazement, for, though he had travelled far, he had
never seen such a place as this on the earth. He would have asked some
questions, but Joe waved him on with feverish eagerness.
“Look here!” he said. “She’s been here, and not so long ago. Look at
the yew-bed, here!”
They looked in wonder at the great cushion of trailing yew that spread
thick over the ground under one of the dead cedars. It curled close, a
perfumed mat; no queen could have a softer couch. Their eyes sought in
vain any print of a light form, though Joe was pointing eagerly.
“I tell ye she’s been here!” he repeated. “No place she loved better
to sleep in than one of these yew-beds. She mostly never slept within
doors in summer, Isly didn’t; and this kind o’ place she loved to
lay in. Look! here’s tufts o’ wool in it, too. Mebbe a lamb came
and couched down with her for company; they allers loved Isly, and
come meechin’ round her whenever she’d go abroad; and mebbe she felt
lonesome, and let one of ’em snuggle up to her.”
His voice broke, and he hurried on; the other two felt their own eyes
dimmed, as the picture came before them,—the lonely girl lying down to
sleep under God’s kind sky, with the wild lamb in her arms.
Still on, in silence now. They had made a circuit, and were coming
near the sea again, but through rougher, wilder ways. Deep gorges
dropped away before them, black as night, with huge boulders wedged
across them; in the wider ones a tiny strip of green, with fresh water
trickling down. Here they came to a broad meadow, with black spruces,
and rocks of orange-tawny lichen glowing like flame. Again, they found
themselves in a moss or bog, with rounded tufts, soft and springy, and
purple flags nodding here and there; while higher up (for June had come
again) they saw the scarlet sorrel spread like a gay mantle on the
great hill shoulder.
At the foot of one of these huge shoulders Joe Brazybone paused, and
dropped his head, questing silently; then, with a gesture of caution,
he led the way upward.
“Do not call!” they had said in the village. “If you call, or startle
her, she will go crazed, if she is not already.”
Joe knew that well, and from time to time he turned fiercely on his
companions, almost threatening in his earnest gestures. He would gladly
have bidden them stay below, and let him go alone to find his mistress;
but he knew, poor Joe, in his humble, dog-like understanding, he knew
his voice was not the one that Isla would be most likely to listen to,
that his face was not the one to please her best, coming suddenly into
her solitude. “Gentle folks wants their like,” he said, patiently to
himself. “Old Joe ain’t the proper person to speak first to his young
lady, supposin’ she’s willin’ to be spoke to.”
Could they but move silently! The grass was soft and new, and made no
sound, but here and there lay dry leaves of last year, caught in the
roots of the trees and held there against the blasts that sweep and
tear through the winter; these crackled if one touched them; now and
again a twig snapped, for the preacher’s dress, gather it close as she
could about her, would sometimes float and catch as she passed. Up the
huge crag they went, drawing their very breath in fear; and now, Joe,
who reached the summit first, flung back his hand, half beckoning,
half warning. The others crept nearer. The rock was crested with
spruce and cedar; peering though the black fringes, they saw a tiny
circle hollowed, carpeted with russet needles and velvet moss, with
strawberry and twin-flower creeping together. Here Isla was sitting,
braiding her long hair. A leaf, half full of wild strawberries, lay
beside her, and with it the broken half of the shell bracelet. Her
face was worn with pain, her eyes were dark and soft, with the look of
many tears. The black trees bent over her, pressed round her, as if
sheltering and protecting her. It was as if she had sought this little
secret chamber of the wild rocks, sure of protection and solitude. Who
should dare to speak to the island child?
Was there some movement, some sigh? No one else heard it, but Isla
suddenly caught her breath; started, turned. For an instant the eyes
of the watchers caught hers, full of leaping terror; then, silently,
she sprang through the screen of trees, and fled away across the rocks.
They must follow her now, as best they might. Keeping out of sight
whenever it was possible, the three sped in pursuit; but their hearts
sank when they came out full on the further slope of the hill, and saw
what lay before them.
Some tremendous convulsion of Nature had in bygone ages struck and
shattered this point of the island. There must have been shock upon
shock, of awful force, to rear and twist and crush and rend the rocks
into these fantastic nightmare shapes. They stretched thus for some
distance, a silent tumult, a tempest turned to stone; then came the
verge.
Tower on tower, pinnacle on pinnacle, rising, rising. And, looking
down, one sheer fall below another; at the foot, the surf leaping,
dancing, tossing to and fro, flinging up white arms as if beckoning,
entreating.
And from crag to crag ran the wild girl, light as the springing foam
itself, flitting now up, now down, but always onward, swift as a bird,
never glancing behind her.
Swift as a bird? What birds were these, that swept out from some hidden
crevice of the rock, black as itself? They balanced on broad wings,
hovered about the child’s head, as if greeting her; then, with hoarse
cries, drove heavily forward, keeping near her as she ran.
When Joe Brazybone saw the ravens; he stopped dead. A dizziness seized
him, and he sank on his knees, and pulled off his ragged cap. “The
woman!” he muttered hoarsely. “Let the woman speak to her! Nothin’ but
the ravens can foller her where she’s goin’. Let the woman speak, and
you and I’ll stop here and pray.”
The trustee hesitated a moment—measured the gulfs before him with his
eye; glanced at the bowed figure beside him; then he, too, dropped to
his knees, and motioned to the preacher to try her voice, since her
feet could go no further.
But the preacher was a brave woman, and was minded to go yet a step
forward. One and two steps she took; then came upon a toppling verge,
below which was nothing but the empty air and the tumbling sea below.
She recoiled, and for the first time a human voice rang through that
awful solitude.
“Isla!” cried the preacher. “Isla, come back! come back to us!”
The girl turned, with a cry, a wild gesture; whether of greeting or
defiance, they could not tell. Then—a slip, was it, or a spring? Who
shall say? A foam crest tossed high in air, then fell, and swept out
through the pale beryl-green, out to the blue beyond. Borne with the
great wave, tossing, drifting,—is it a tress of weed torn from the
rock? Or has the sea taken his child to himself?
THE END.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Note: Page 82, “sigh” changed to “sight” (sight; but no
earrings)