Jupiter Lights

Whatever name he gave it, she knew that she held the joy of his life in her hands, that he would come to her for this – had already come; and that it always would be so. This was happiness enough for her.

This happiness had existed but ten days. But these days had seemed like months of joy, she had lived each moment so fully. “Sejed, Prince of Ethiopia, vowed to have three days of uninterrupted happiness – ” she might have remembered the old fable and its ending. But she remembered nothing, she scorned to remember; let the unhappy, the unloved, think of the past; she would drink in all the sunshine of the present, she would live, live!

“Row a little way up the lake to meet me,” Paul had said. At half-past three of the afternoon he had indicated, she went to the beach; one of the Irishmen, under her direction, began to push down a canoe. The open way in which she did this – in which she had done everything since that night – was in itself an effectual disguise; no one thought it remarkable that she should be going to meet Paul. As she was about to take her place in the canoe, Hollis appeared.

“Going far? We don’t know much about that Paddy,” he said, in an undertone.

“Only to meet Paul.”

“If he’s late, you may have to go a good way.”

“He won’t be late.”

“Well, he may be,” answered Hollis, patiently. “I guess I’ll take you, if you’ll let me; and then, when we meet, I’ll come back with his man in the other canoe.”

“Very well,” Eve responded. She did not comment upon the terms of his offer, she did not care what he thought. She took her place, and he paddled westward.

It was a beautiful afternoon; a slight coolness, which made itself felt through the sunshine, showed that the short Northern summer was approaching its end. As she sat with her back to the prow, she was obliged to turn her head to look for the other canoe; and this she did many times. After one of these quests, she saw that Hollis’s eyes were upon her.

“Is there any change in me?” she asked, laughing.

“Rather!”

“What is it?”

But poor Hollis did not know how to say, “You are so much more beautiful.”

“It’s my white dress,” Eve suggested, in a somewhat troubled voice. “I had it made in Port aux Pins. It’s only piqué.” She smoothed the folds of the skirt for a moment, doubtfully.

“I guess white favors you,” answered Hollis, with what he would have called a festive wave of his hand.

Her mood had now changed. “It’s no matter, I’m not afraid!” She was speaking her thoughts aloud, sure that he would not understand. But he did understand.

The other canoe came into sight after a while, shooting round a point; Eve waved her handkerchief in answer to Paul’s hail; the two boats met.

“Mr. Hollis knows that you are to take me back,” said Eve, as eagerly as a child.

Paul glanced at Hollis. But the other man bore the look bravely. “Proud to be of service,” he answered, waving his hand again, with two fingers extended lightly. He changed places with Paul; Paul and Eve, in their canoe, glided away.

It was at this moment that Cicely, who had been asleep, opened her eyes. Her lodge was quiet; Mrs. Mile was reading near the window, her seat carefully placed so that the light should fall over her left shoulder upon the page.

Cicely gazed at her for some time; then she jumped from the couch with a quick bound. “It’s impossible to lie here another instant and see that History of Windham! The next thing, you’ll be proposing to read it aloud to me; you look exactly like a woman who loves to read aloud.” She began to put on her shoes.

“You are going for a walk? I shall be glad to go too,” answered Mrs. Mile promptly, putting a marker in her book, and rising.

“No,” responded Cicely; “I can’t have those boots of yours pounding along beside me to-day, Priscilla Jane. Impossible.”

“Well, I do declare!” said Mrs. Mile, reduced in her surprise to the language of her youth. “They can’t pound much, Mrs. Morrison, in the sand; and there’s nothing but sand here.”

“They grind it down!” answered Cicely. “You can call grandpa, if you don’t want me to go alone; but come with me to-day you shall not, you clean, broad-faced, turn-out-your-toes, do-your-duty old relict of Abner Whittredge Mile.” She looked at Mrs. Mile consideringly as she said this, bringing out each word in a soft, clear tone.

The judge was listlessly roving about the beach. Mrs. Mile gave him Cicely’s request. “She is saying very odd things to-day, sir,” she added, impersonally.

The judge, alarmed, hurried to the lodge; Mrs. Mile could not keep up with him.

“Priscilla Jane is short-winded, isn’t she?” remarked Cicely, at the lodge door, as he joined her. “Whenever she comes uphill, she always stops, and pretends to admire the view, while she pants, ‘What a beautiful scene! What a privilege to see it!’”

The judge grinned; he too had heard Mrs. Mile speak of “privileges.”

“Come for a walk, grandpa,” Cicely went on. She took his arm and they went away together, followed by the careful eyes of the nurse, who had paused at the top of the ascent.

“This is a ruse, grandpa,” Cicely said, after a while. “I wanted to take a walk alone, and she wouldn’t let me; but you will.”

“Why alone, my child?”

“Because I’m always being watched; I’m just like a person in a cell, don’t you know, with one of those little windows cut in the door, through which the sentinel outside can always look in; I am never alone.”

“It must be dreadful,” the judge answered, with conviction.

“Wait till you have seen Priscilla Jane in her night-gown,” said Cicely, with equal conclusiveness.

“Heaven forbid!” said the judge, with a shrill little chuckle. Then he turned and looked at her; she seemed so much like her old self.

“You will let me go, grandpa?” She put up her face and kissed him.

“If you will promise to come back soon.”

“Of course I will.”

He let her go on alone. She looked back and smiled once or twice; then he lost sight of her; he returned to the beach by a roundabout way, in order to deceive Priscilla Jane; he was almost as much pleased as Cicely to outwit her.

Cicely went on through the forest; she walked slowly, not stopping to gather flowers as usual. After a while her vague glance rested upon two figures in the distance. She stopped, and as, by chance, she was standing close beside the trunk of a large tree, her own person was concealed. The two figures were coming in her direction, they drew nearer, they paused; and then there followed a picture as old as Paris and Helen, as old as Tristram and Isolde: a lover taking in his arms the woman he adores. And it was Paul Tennant who was the lover; it was Eve who looked up at him with all her heart in her eyes.

A shock passed over Cicely, the expression of her face changed rapidly as her gaze remained fixed upon Eve: first, surprise; then a strange quick anger; then perplexity. She left her place, and went rapidly forward.

Eve saw her first, she drew herself away from Paul; but immediately she came back to him, laying her hand on his shoulder as if to hold him, to keep him by her side.

“Paul,” said Cicely, still looking at Eve, “something has come to me; Eve told me that she did a dreadful thing.” And now she transferred her gaze to Paul, looking at him with earnestness, as if appealing to him to lighten her perplexity.

“Yes, dear; let us go back to the camp,” said Paul, soothingly.

“Wait till I have told you all. She came to me, and asked – I don’t know where it was exactly?” And now she looked at Eve, inquiringly.

Eve’s eyes met hers, and the deep antagonism of the expression roused the dulled intelligence. “How you do hate me, Eve! It’s because you love Paul. I don’t see how Paul can like you, when you were always so hard to Ferdie; for from the first she was hard to him, Paul; from the very first. I remember – “

Eve, terrified, turned away, thus releasing Cicely from the spell of her menacing glance.

Cicely paused; and then went back to her former narrative confusedly, speaking with interruptions, with pauses. “She came to me, Paul, and she asked, ‘Cicely, do you know how he died?’ And I said, ‘Yes; there were two negroes.’ And she answered me, ‘No; there were no negroes – ’”

“Dreams, Cicely,” said Paul, kindly. “Every one has dreams like that.”

“No. I have a great many dreams, but this was not one of them,” responded Cicely. “Wait; it will come to me.”

“Take her back to the camp; carry her,” said Eve, in a sharp voice.

“Oh, she’ll come without that,” Paul answered, smiling at the peremptory tone.

“You go first, then. I will bring her.”

“Don’t leave me alone with Eve,” pleaded Cicely, shrinking close to Paul.

“Take her back,” said Eve. And her voice expressed such acute suffering that Paul did his best to content her.

“Come,” he said, gently, taking Cicely’s hand.

“A moment,” answered Cicely, putting her other hand on Paul’s arm, as if to hold his attention. “And then she said: ‘Don’t you remember that we escaped through the woods to the north point, and that you tried to push off the boat, and couldn’t. Don’t you remember that gleam of the candle down the dark road?’”

Eve made an involuntary movement.

“I wonder what candle she could have been thinking of!” pursued Cicely, in a musing voice. “There are a great many candles in the Catholic churches, that I know.”

Eve looked across at Paul with triumph in her eyes.

“And she said that a baby climbed up by one of the seats,” Cicely went on. “And that this man – I don’t know who he was, exactly – made a dash forward – ” Here she lost the thread, and stopped. Then she began again: “She took me away ever so far – we went in a steamboat; and Ferdie died all alone! You can’t like her for that, Paul; you can’t!” Her face altered. “Why don’t I see him over there on the other beach?” she asked, quickly.

“You see?” said Eve, with trembling lips.

“Yes,” answered Paul, watching the quivering motion. “We haven’t had our walk, Eve; remember that.”

“I can come out again. After we have got her back.”

Cicely had ceased speaking. She turned and searched Eve’s face with eyes that dwelt and lingered. “How happy you look, Eve! And yet I am sure you have no right to be happy, I am sure there is some reason – The trouble is that I can’t remember what it is! Perhaps it will come to me yet,” she added, threateningly.

Paul, drew her away; he took her back to the camp.

That evening, Eve came to him on the beach.

“Do you love me? Do you love me the same as ever?” she said.

He could scarcely hear her.

“Do you think I have had time to change since afternoon?” he asked, laughing.

And then life came back to the woman by his side, came in the red that flushed her cheeks and her white throat, in her revived breath.

“Paul,” she said, after a while, “send Cicely home; send her home with her grandfather, she can travel now without danger.”

“I can’t desert Cicely,” said Paul, surprised.

“It wouldn’t be desertion; you can always help her. And she would be much happier there than here.”

“She’s not going to be very happy anywhere, I am afraid.”

“The judge would be happier, too,” said Eve, shifting her ground.

“I dare say. Poor old man!”

“A winter in Port aux Pins would kill him,” Eve continued.

“I intended to take them south before the real winter, the deep snow.”

“Mrs. Mile could go now. And – and perhaps Mr. Hollis.”

“Kit? What could Kit do down there?”

“Marry Miss Sabrina,” suggested Eve, with a sudden burst of wild laughter, in which Paul joined.

“They are all to go, are they? But you and I are not to go; is that your plan?” he went on.

“Yes.”

He kissed her. “Paul Tennant and his wife will take Cicely south themselves,” he said, stroking her hair caressingly. “It’s always braided so closely, Eve; how long is it when down?”

But she did not hear these whispered words; she drew herself away from him with passionate strength. “No, she must go with some one else; she can go with any one you please; we can have two nurses, instead of one. But you – you must not go; you must stay with me.”

“Why, Eve, I hardly know you! Why do you feel so about poor little Cicely? Why strike a person who’s down?”

“Oh, yes – down; that is what you all say. Yet she has had everything, even if she has lost it now; and some people go through all their lives without one single thing they really care for. She shall not rob me of this, I will not let her. I defy her; I defy her!”

“She shall go back to Romney,” said Paul. What these disagreements between the two women were about, he did not know. His idea was that he would marry Eve as soon as possible – within the next ten days; and then, after they were married, he would tell her that it was best that they should take Cicely south themselves. She would see the good sense of his decision, she would not dispute his judgment when once she was his wife; she could not have any real dislike for poor little Cicely, that was impossible.

Eve came back to him humbly enough. “I am afraid you do not like my interfering with your plans?” she said.

“You may interfere as much as you like,” answered Paul, smiling.

XXVIII

THE next day Paul started at dawn for Port aux Pins, he wished to make the house ready for his wife; he had not much money, but there was one room in the plain cottage which should be beautiful. No suspicion came to him that there would be any difficulty in making it beautiful; his idea was simply that it was a matter of new furniture.

He reached Port aux Pins at night, and let himself into his cottage with his key; lighting a candle, he went to his room. He had never been dissatisfied with this simple apartment, he was not dissatisfied now; there was a good closet, where he could hang up his clothes; there was a broad shelf, where he could put his hand in the dark upon anything which he might want; there was his iron bedstead, and there was his white-pine bureau; two wooden chairs; a wash-hand stand, with a large bowl; a huge tin pail for water, a flat bath-tub in position on the floor, and plenty of towels and sponges – what could man want more?

But a woman would want more; and he gave a little laugh, which had a thrill in it, as he thought of Eve standing there, and looking about her at his plain masculine arrangements. The bare floor would not please her, perhaps; he must order a carpet. “Turkey,” he thought, vaguely; he had heard the word, and supposed that it signified something very light in color, with a great many brilliant roses. “Perhaps there ought to be a few more little things,” he said to himself, doubtfully. Then, after another moment’s survey: “But I needn’t be disturbed, she’ll soon fill it full of tottlish little tables and dimity; she’ll flounce everything with white muslin, and tie everything with blue ribbons; she’ll overflow into the next room too, this won’t be enough for her. Perhaps I’d better throw the two into one, with a big fireplace – I know she likes big fireplaces; if it’s as large as that, I sha’n’t be suffocated, even with all her muslin.” And, with another fond laugh, he turned in.

The morning after Paul’s departure, Eve did not go near Cicely; she asked Mrs. Mile, in a tone which even that unimaginative woman found haughty, how Mrs. Morrison was. (In reality the haughtiness hid a trembling fear.)

“She seems better, Miss Bruce, as regards her physical state. Truth compels me to add, however, that she says extremely irrational things.”

“What things?” asked Eve, with a pang of dread. For the things which Mrs. Mile would call irrational might indicate that Cicely was herself again, Mrs. Mile’s idea of the rational being always the commonplace.

“When she first woke, ma’am, she said, ‘Oh, what a splendid wind! – how it does blow! I must go out and run and run. Can you run, Priscilla Jane?’ – when my name, ma’am, is Priscilla Ann. Seeing that she was so lively, I began to tell her a dream which I had had. She interrupted me: ‘Dreams are the reflections of our thoughts by day, Priscilla Jane. I know your thoughts by day; they are wearing. I don’t want repetitions of them by night, I should be ground to powder.’ Now, ma’am, could anything be more irrational?”

“She is herself again!” thought Eve. She went off into the forest, and did not return until the noon meal was over. Going to the kitchen, she ate some bread, she was fond of dry bread; coming back after this frugal repast, she still avoided Cicely’s lodge, she went down to the beach. Here her restlessness ceased for the moment; she sat looking over the water, her eyes not seeing it, seeing only Paul. After half an hour, Hollis, with simulated carelessness, passed that way and stopped. As soon as he saw her face he said to himself, “They are to be married immediately!”

“We sha’n’t be staying much longer at Jupiter Light, I guess,” he said aloud, in a jocular tone.

“No,” Eve answered. “The summer is really over,” she added, as if in explanation.

“Don’t look much like it to-day.”

She made no reply.

“Paul went back to Potterpins rather in a hurry, didn’t he?” pursued Hollis, playing with his misery.

“Yes. – He has a good deal to do,” she continued. If he could not resist playing with his misery, neither could she help exulting in her happiness, parading it for her own joy in spoken words; it made it more real.

“Good deal to do? He didn’t tell me about it; perhaps I could have helped him,” Hollis went on awkwardly, but looking at her with all his heart in his eyes – his poor, hungry, unsatisfied old heart.

“You could be of use to us,” said Eve, suddenly; (“Us!” thought Hollis.) – “the very greatest, Mr. Hollis. If you would go south with Judge Abercrombie and Mrs. Morrison it would be everything. They will probably go in a week or ten days, and Mrs. Mile accompanies them; but if you could go too, it would be much safer.”

“And you to stay in Port aux Pins with Paul,” thought Hollis. “I don’t grudge it to you, Evie, God knows I don’t – may you be very happy, sweet one! But I shall have to get out of this all the same. I’m ashamed of myself, old fellow that I am, but I can’t stand it, I can’t! I shall have to clear out. I’ll go west.”

Eve, meanwhile, was waiting for his reply. “Of course, Miss Bruce,” he answered aloud, “should like nothing better than a little run down South. Why, the old judge and me, we’ll make a regular spree of it!” And he slapped his leg in confirmation.

Eve gave him a bright smile by way of thanks. But she was too much absorbed to talk long with anybody, and presently she left him, taking a path through the woods.

In fifteen minutes her restlessness brought her back again. She stopped at the edge of the camp; Porley, near by, was making “houses” – that is, squares and pyramids of the little pebbles of the beach, which Master Jack demolished when completed, with the air of a conqueror. “Porley, go and ask the nurse how Mrs. Morrison is now; – whether she is more quiet.”

“Mis’ Morrison, she’s ebber so much weller to-day,” volunteered Porley. “When she ain’t so quiet, Miss Bruce – droppin’ off inter naps all de time —den she’s weller.”

“Do as I tell you,” said Eve.

The girl went off.

“House,” demanded Jack.

Eve took him on her shoulder instead.

“Sing to Jacky; poor, poor Jacky!” said the child, gleefully.

“Mis’ Mile, she say Mis’ Morrison done gone ter sleep dish yere minute,” reported Porley, with a crestfallen air, returning.

Eve’s spirits rose. “Oh, Jack, naughty boy!” She laughed convulsively, lifting up her shoulder, as the child tried to insert one of his pebbles under her linen collar, selecting a particularly ticklish spot on her throat for the purpose. – “Do you want to go out on the lake?”

Jack dropped his pebble; he was always wild with delight at the prospect of a voyage. Porley picked up his straw hat, and brought his little coat, in case the air should grow cool; in ten minutes they were afloat. Eve turned the canoe down the lake, rowing eastward.

After a voyage of twenty minutes, she headed the boat shoreward and landed; the woods hereabout had a gray-green look which tempted her; they brought back the memory of that first walk with Paul. “See to Jack,” she said to Porley briefly, lifting the child safely to the beach. “I shall be back soon.” Entering the wood, she walked on at random, keeping within sight of the water.

She was lost in a day-dream, one of those day-dreams which come sometimes to certain temperaments with such vividness that the real world disappears; she was with Paul, she was looking at him, his arm was round her, their future life together unrolled itself before her day by day, hour by hour, in all its details; in her happiness, all remembrance of anything else vanished away.

How long this state lasted she never knew. At a certain point a distant cry crossed the still ecstasy; but it reached her vaguely, it did not bring her back. A second summons was more distinct; but it seemed an impertinence which it was not necessary to answer. A third time came the sound, and now there were syllables: “Miss E-eve! Miss E-eve!” Then, a moment later, “Oh, Ba-by!” She recognized the shrillness of a negro woman’s voice – it was Porley. “Baby?” That could only mean Jack! The trance was over, she felt as if a whip had been brought suddenly down upon her shoulders. She rushed to the lake, and from there along the beach towards the spot where she had left the child.

The screams grew louder. A bend hid that part of the beach from her view; would she never reach the end of that bend! She was possessed by a great fear. “Oh, don’t let anything happen to baby!” She could not have told herself to whom she was appealing.

At last she reached the curve, she saw what had happened: the child, alone in the canoe, had been carried out to deep water.

Porley, frantic with grief, had waded out as far as she could; she was standing with the water up to her chin, sobbing aloud. Eve’s flushed face turned white. She beckoned to Porley to come to her. Then she forced herself to stand motionless, in order to recover her breath. As Porley came up, “Stop crying!” she commanded. “We must not frighten him. Go back under the trees where he cannot see you, and sit there quietly; don’t speak.”

When she was left alone, she went up the beach until she was on a line with the canoe; the boat moved waywardly and slowly, but it was being carried all the time still farther from the shore. “Jacky, are you having a good time out there?” she called, with a smiling face, as though the escapade had been his own, and he had cleverly outwitted them.

There was not a grain of the coward in the child. “Ess,” he called back, triumphantly. He was sitting on a folded shawl in the bottom of the canoe, holding on with his hands to the sides; his eyes came just above its edge.

“Aunty Eve is going to get a boat and come out after you,” Eve went on; “then we’ll go fishing. But Jack must sit perfectly still, or else she won’t come; perfectly still. Does Jacky hear?”

“Ess,” called Jack again.

“If you are tired, put your head down and go to sleep. Aunty Eve will come, soon if you are still; not if you move about.”

“I’s still,” called Jack, in a high key.

“If there was only a man here! – a man could swim out and bring the boat in,” she thought, wringing her hands, and then stopping lest Jack should see the motion. She did not allow herself to think – “If Paul were only here!” It was on Paul’s account, to be able to think of him by herself, to dream of their daily life together – it was for this that she had left her brother’s child on that solitary beach, with only a careless negro girl to watch over him! But there was no man near, and there was no second boat. The canoe was already visibly farther away; little Jack’s eyes, looking at her, were becoming indistinct, she could see only the outline of his head and the yellow of his curls. She waved her hand to him and sang, clearly and gayly:

“Row the boat, row the boat, up to the strand;Before our door there is dry land – ”

And Jack answered with a distant “Ess.” Then he tried to go on with it. “Who pums idder, all booted an’ spur-r-rd,” he chanted, straining his little lungs to the utmost, so that his auntie should hear him.

The tears poured down Eve’s cheeks as she heard the baby voice; she knew he could not see them. For an instant, she thought of trying to swim out to him herself. “I can swim. It isn’t very far.” She began to unbutton her boots. But should she have the strength to bring him in, either in the canoe or in her arms? And if she should sink, there would be no one to save Jack. She rebuttoned her boots and ran to Porley. “Go to the beach, and walk up and down where Jack can see you. Call to him once in a while, but not too often; call gayly, don’t let him see that you are frightened; if he thinks you are frightened, he will become frightened himself and move about; then he will upset the boat. Do you understand what I mean? I am going back to the camp for another canoe. Keep him in sight; and try – do try to be sensible.”