XXI
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!”
Eve had risen. “I must go; I will come again soon.”
“Oh, miss,” said the woman, dropping her gossip, and returning to her gratitude (which was genuine) – “oh, miss, mayn’t I know your name? I want to put it in me prayers. There was just three cents in the house, miss, when you came; and Lyddy she couldn’t eat the last meal I got for her – a cracker and a piece of mackerel.”
“You can pray for me without a name,” said Eve, going out.
She felt as though there were hot coals in her throat, she could scarcely breathe. She went towards the forest, and, entering it by a cart-track, walked rapidly on. Rose Bonham was the daughter of the butter-woman. Bonham had a forest farm about five miles from Port aux Pins on the road to Betsy Lake, and his wife kept Paul’s cottage supplied with butter. Eve had seen the daughter several times; she was a very beautiful girl. Eve and Cicely thought her bold; but the women who eat the butter are apt to think so of those who bring it, if the bringers have sparkling eyes, peach-like complexions, and the gait of Hebe.
And Paul himself had suggested the spending the night there – an entirely unnecessary thing – under the pretence of gaining thereby an earlier start in the morning.
She came to a little pool of clear water; pausing beside it, half unconsciously, she beheld the reflection of her face in its mirror, and something seemed to say to her, “What is your education, your culture, your senseless pride worth, when compared with the peach-like bloom of that young girl?” Her own image looked up at her, pale, cold, and stern; it did not seem to her to have a trace of beauty. She took a stone, and, casting it in the pool, shattered the picture. “I wish I were beautiful beyond words! I could be beautiful if I had everything; if nothing but the finest lace ever touched me, if I never raised my hand to do anything for myself, if I had only dainty and delicate and beautiful things about me, I should be beautiful – I know I should. Bad women have those things, they say; why haven’t they the best of it?”
She began to walk on again. She had not given much thought to the direction her steps were taking; now it came to her that the road to Lake Betsy, and therefore to Bonham’s, was not far away, and she crossed the wood towards it. When she reached it, she turned towards Bonham’s. Five miles. It was now after five o’clock.
When she came in sight of the low roof and scattered out-buildings a sudden realization of what she was doing came to her, and she stopped. Why was she there? If they should see her, any of them, what would they think? What could she say? As though they were already upon her, she took refuge hastily behind the high bushes with which the road was bordered. “Oh, what have I come here for? Humiliating! Let me get back home! – let me get back home!” She returned towards Port aux Pins by the fields, avoiding the road; the shadows were dense now; it was almost night.
She had gone more than a mile when she stopped. An irresistible force impelled her, and she retraced her steps. When she reached Bonham’s the second time, lights were shining from the windows. The roughly-built house rose directly from the road. Blinds and curtains were evidently considered superfluous. With breathless eagerness she drew near; the evening was cool, and the windows were closed; through the small wrinkled panes she could distinguish a wrinkled Cicely, a wrinkled judge, a Hollis much askew, and a Paul Tennant with a dislocated jaw; they were playing a game. After some moments she recognized that it was whist; she almost laughed aloud, a bitter laugh at herself; she had walked five miles to see a game of whist.
A dog barked, she turned away and began her long journey homeward.
But the thought came to her, and would not leave her. “After the game is over, and the others have gone to bed, he will see that girl somehow!”
She did not find the road a long one. Passion made it short, a passion of jealous despair.
Reaching the town at last, she passed an ephemeral ice-cream saloon with a large window; seated within, accompanied by a Port aux Pins youth of the hobbledehoy species, was Rose Bonham, eating ice-cream.
The next evening at six the excursion party returned. At seven they were seated at the tea-table. The little door-bell jangled loudly in the near hall, there was a sound of voices; Paul, who was nearest the door, rose and went to see what it was.
After a long delay he came back and looked in. They had all left the table, and Cicely had gone to her room; Paul beckoned Eve out silently. His face had a look that made her heart stop beating; in the narrow hall, under the small lamp, he gave her, one by one, three telegraphic despatches, open.
“I ought to have had them two days ago,” said Paul. He stood with his lips slightly apart looking at her, but without seeing her or seeing anything.
XXII
“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting,
For fear of little men:
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!”
SO, in a sweet little thread of a voice, sang Cicely; her tones, though clear, were so faint that they seemed to come from far away. She was sitting in an easy-chair, with pillows behind her, her hands laid on the arms of the chair, her feet on a footstool. Her eyes wandered over the opposite wall, and presently she began again, beating time with her hand on the arm of the chair:
“Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home;
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake – awake.”
She laughed.
The judge left the room. He walked on tiptoe; but he might have worn hobnailed shoes, and made all the noise possible – Cicely would not have noticed it. “I can’t stand it!” he said to Paul, outside.
“How it must feel – to be as stiff and old as that!” was the thought that passed through the younger man’s mind. For the judge’s features were no longer able to express the sorrows that lay beneath; even while speaking his despair his face remained immovable, like a mask.
“But it’s merciful, after all,” Paul had answered, aloud.
“Merciful?”
“Yes. Come to my room and I’ll tell you why.”
Straw was laid down before Paul’s cottage. Within, all was absolutely quiet; even little Jack had been sent away. He had been sent to Hollis, who was taking care of him so elaborately, with so many ingenious devices for his entertainment, that Porley was wildly idle; there was nothing for her to do.
Standing beside the white-pine table in Paul’s bare bedroom, the two men held their conference. Paul’s explanation lasted three minutes. “Ferdie was entangled with her long before he ever saw Cicely,” he concluded, “and he always liked her; that was her hold upon him – he liked her, and she knew it; he didn’t drop her even after he was married.”
From the rigid old face there came a hot imprecation.
“Let him alone – will you? – now he’s dead,” suggested Paul, curtly. “I don’t suppose that you yourself have been so immaculate all your life that you can afford to set up as a pattern?”
“But my wife, sir – Nothing ever touched her.”
“You mean that you arranged things so that she shouldn’t know. All decent men do that, I suppose, and Ferdie didn’t in the least intend that Cicely should know, either. He told her to stay here; if she had persisted in going down there against his wish, and against his arrangements also, fancy what she would have put her head into! I couldn’t let her do that, of course. But though I told her enough to give her some clew, she hadn’t the least suspicion of the whole truth, and now she need never know.”
“She won’t have time, she’s dying,” answered the grandfather.
Cicely’s state was alarming. A violent attack of brain-fever had been followed by the present condition of comparative quiet; she recognized no one; much of the time she sang to herself gayly. The doctor feared that the paroxysms would return. They had been terrible to witness; Paul had held her, and he had exerted all the force of his strong arms to keep her from injuring herself, her fragile little form had thrown itself about so wildly, like a bird beating its life out against the bars of its cage.
No one in this desolate cottage had time to think of the accumulation of troubles that had come upon them: the silence, broken only by Cicely’s strange singing, the grief of Paul for his brother, the dumb despair of the old man, the absence of little Jack, the near presence of Death. But of the four faces, that of Eve expressed the deepest hopelessness. She stayed constantly in the room where Cicely was, but she did nothing; from the first she had not offered to help in any way, and the doctor, seeing that she was to be of no use, had sent a nurse. On the fourth day, Paul said: “You must have some sleep, Eve. Go to your room; I will have you called if she grows worse.”
“No; I must stay here.”
“Why? There is nothing for you to do.”
“You mean that I do nothing. I know it; but I must stay.”
On the seventh evening he spoke again; Cicely’s quiet state had now lasted twenty-four hours. “Lying on a lounge is no good, Eve; to-night you must go to bed. Otherwise we shall have you breaking down too.”
“Do I look as though I should break down?”
They had happened to meet in the hall outside of Cicely’s door; the sunset light, coming through a small window, flooded the place with gold.
“If you put it in that way, I must say you do not.”
“I knew it. I am very strong.”
“You speak as though you regretted it.”
“I do regret it.” She put out her hand to open the door. – “Don’t think that I am trying to be sensational,” she pleaded.
“All I think is that you are an obstinate girl; and one very much in need of rest, too.”
Her eyes filled, he had spoken as one speaks to a tired child; but she turned her head so that he should not see her face, and left him, entering Cicely’s room, and closing the door behind her; her manner and the movement, as he saw them, were distinctly repellent.
Cicely did not notice her entrance; the nurse, who had some knitting in her hand in order not to appear too watchful, but who in reality saw the rise and fall of her patient’s every breath, was near. Eve went to the place where she often sat – a chair partially screened by the projection of a large wardrobe; she could see only a towel-stand opposite, and the ingrain carpet, in ugly octagons of red and green, at her feet. The silence was profound.
“I am a murderer, it is a murderer who is sitting here. If people only knew! But it is enough for me to know.
– “They said he was getting better. Instead of that he is dead, – he is dead, and I shot him; I lifted the pistol and fired. At the time it didn’t seem wrong. But this is what it means to kill, I suppose; – this awful agony.
– “I have never been one of the afraid kind. I wish now that I had been; then this wouldn’t have happened; the baby might have been horribly hurt, Cicely too; but at least I shouldn’t have been a murderer. For if you kill you are a murderer, no matter whether the person you kill is good or bad, or what you do it for; you have killed some one, you have made his life come to a sudden stop, and for that you must take the responsibility.
– “Oh, God! it is too dreadful! I cannot bear it. Sometimes, when I have been unhappy, I have waked and found it was only a dream; couldn’t this be a dream?
– “I was really going to tell, I was going to tell Cicely. But I thought I would wait until he was well – as every one said he would be soon – so that she wouldn’t hate me quite so much. If she should die without coming to her senses, I shouldn’t be able to tell her.
– “Hypocrite! even to myself. In reality I don’t want her to come to her senses; I have sat here for days, afraid to leave her, watching every moment lest she should begin to talk rationally. For then I should have to tell her; and she would tell Paul. Oh, I cannot have him know – I cannot.”
Made stupid by her misery, she sat gazing at the floor, her eyes fixed, her lips slightly apart.
She was exhausted; for the same thoughts had besieged her ever since she had read the despatch, “Morrison died this morning,” – an unending repetition of exactly the same sentences, constantly following each other, and constantly beginning again; even in sleep they continued, like a long nightmare, so that she woke weeping. And now without a moment’s respite, while she sat there with her eyes on the carpet, the involuntary recital began anew: “I am a murderer, it is a murderer who is sitting here. If people only knew!”
“They may rail at this life; from the hour I began it
I’ve found it a life full of kindness and bliss;
And until you can show me some happier planet,
More social, more gay, I’ll content me with this,”
chanted Cicely, sweetly.
“The song of last Christmas at Romney,” Eve’s thoughts went on. “Oh, how changed I am since then – how changed! That night I thought only of my brother. Now I have almost forgotten him; – Jack, do you care? All I think of is Paul, Paul, Paul. How beautiful it was in that gray-green wood! But what am I dreaming about? How can the person who killed his brother be anything to him?
– “Once he said – he told me himself – ‘I care for Ferdie more than for anything in the world.’ It’s Ferdie I have killed.
– ”‘Morrison buried this afternoon. Address me Charleston Hotel, Charleston.’ He put those despatches in his pocket and went into the back room. He sat down by the table, and laid his head upon his arms. His shoulders shook, I know he was crying, he was crying for his brother. Oh, I will go down-stairs and tell him the whole; I will go this moment.” She rose.
On the stairs she met the judge. “Is she worse?” he asked, alarmed at seeing her outside of the room.
“No; the same.”
She found Paul in the lower hall. “Is she worse?” he said.
“No. How constantly you think of her!”
“Of course.”
“Can I speak to you for a moment?” She led the way to the small back room where he had sat with his head on his arms. “I want to tell you – ” she began. Then she stopped.
His face had a worn look, his eyes were dull – a dullness caused by sorrow and the pressure of care. But to her, as he stood there, he was supreme, her whole heart went out to him. “How I love him!” The feeling swept over her like a flood, overwhelming everything else.
“What is it you wish to tell me?” Paul asked, seeing that she still remained silent.
“How can I do it! – how can I do it!” she said to herself.
“Don’t tell me, then, if it troubles you,” he added, his voice taking the kindly tones she dreaded.
Her courage vanished. “Another time,” she said hurriedly, and, turning, she left the room.
But as she went up the stairs she knew that there would be no other time. “Never! never! I shall never tell him. What do I care for truthfulness, or courage, compared with one word of his spoken in that tone!”
XXIII
MISS SABRINA’S first letters had been so full of grief that they had been vague; to her there had been but the one fact: Ferdie was dead.
She had become much attached to him. There was nothing strange in this; both as boy and as man, Ferdinand Morrison had been deeply loved by many. The poor woman knew his fault (she thought it his only one), for the judge had written an account of all that had happened, and the reasons for Cicely’s flight. Nevertheless she loved this prodigal as the prodigal is often so dearly loved by the woman whose heart is pierced the most deeply by his excesses – his mother. And Miss Sabrina, as regarded her devotion, might indeed have been Ferdie’s mother; something in him roused the dormant maternal feeling – the maternal passion – which existed in her heart unknown to herself. She did not comprehend what it was that was disturbing her so much, and yet at the same time making her so happy – she did not comprehend that it was stifled nature asserting itself at this late day; the circumstances of her life had made her a gentle, conciliatory old maid; she was not in the least aware that as a mother she could have been a tigress in the defence of her sons. For she was a woman who would have rejoiced in her sons; daughters would never have been important to her.
She thought that she was perfectly reasonable about Ferdie. No, Cicely must not come back to him for the present; baby too – darling little boy! – he must be kept away; and oh! how terrible that flight through the woods, and the escape in the boat; she thought of it every night with tremors. Yet, in spite of all, she loved the man who had caused these griefs. His illness made him dependent upon her, and his voice calling her name in peremptory tones, like those of a spoiled child – this was the sweetest sound her ears had ever heard. He would reform, all her hopes and plans were based upon that; she went about with prayer on her lips from morning till night – prayer for him.
When his last breath had been drawn, it seemed to her as if the daily life of the world must have stopped too, outside of the darkened chamber; as if people could not go on eating and drinking, and the sun go on shining, with Ferdie dead. She was able to keep her place at the head of the household until after the funeral; then she became the prey of an illness which, though quiet and unobtrusive, like everything else connected with her, was yet sufficiently persistent to confine her to her bed. Nanny Singleton, who had come to Romney every day, rowed by Boliver, now came again, this time to stay; she took possession of the melancholy house, re-established order after her inexact fashion, and then devoted herself to nursing her friend.
Two of Nanny Singleton’s letters.
Letter number one:
“ROMNEY, Friday evening.
“DEAR JUDGE, – I feel that we have been very remiss in not sending to you sooner the details of this heart-breaking event. But we have been so afflicted ourselves with the unexpectedness of it all, with the funeral, and with dear Sabrina’s illness, that we have been somewhat negligent. We feel, Rupert and I, that we have lost not only one who was personally dear to us, but also the most fascinating, the most brilliant, the most thoroughly engaging young man whom it has ever been our good-fortune to meet. Such a death is a public calamity, and you, his nearest and dearest, must admit us (as well as many, many others) to that circle of mourning friends who esteemed him highly, admired him inexpressibly, and loved him sincerely for the unusually charming qualities he possessed.
“Our dearest Sabrina told us all the particulars the morning after his death, for of course we came directly to her as soon as we heard what had happened. He had been making, as you probably know, a visit in Savannah; Dr. Knox had accompanied him, or perhaps it was that he joined him there; at any rate, it was Dr. Knox who brought him home. It seems that he had overestimated his strength – so natural in a young man! – and he arrived much exhausted; so much so, indeed, that the doctor thought it better that dear Sabrina should not see him that evening. And the next day she only saw him once, and from across the room; he was alarmingly pale, and did not open his eyes; Dr. Knox said that he must not try to speak. It was the next morning at dawn that the doctor came to her door and told Powlyne to waken her. (But she was not asleep.) ‘He is going, if you wish to come;’ this was all he said. Dear Sabrina, greatly agitated, threw on her wrapper over her night-dress, and hastened to the bedside of the dear boy. He lay in a stupor, he did not know her; and in less than half an hour his breath ceased. She prayed for him during the interval, she knelt down and prayed aloud; it was a wonder that she had the strength to do it when a soul so dear to her was passing. When it had taken flight, she closed his eyes, and made all orderly about him. And she kissed him for Cicely, she told me.
“The funeral she arranged herself in every detail. Receiving no replies to her despatches to you, she was obliged to use her own judgment; she had confessed to me in the beginning that she much wished to have him buried here at Romney, in the little circle of her loved ones, and not hearing from you to the contrary, she decided to do this; he lies beside your brother Marmaduke. Our friends came from all the islands near and far; there must have been sixty persons in all, many bringing flowers. Dr. Knox stayed with us until after the funeral – that is, until day before yesterday; then he took his leave of us, and went to Charleston by the evening boat. He seems a most excellent young man. And if he strikes us as a little cold, no doubt it is simply that, being a Northerner, and not a man of much cultivation, he could not appreciate fully Ferdie’s very remarkable qualities. Dear old Dr. Daniels, who has been in Virginia for several weeks, has now returned; he comes over every day to see Sabrina. He tells me that her malady is intermittent fever – a mild form; the only point is to keep her strength up, and this we endeavor to do with chickens. I will remain here as long as I can be of the slightest service, and you may rest assured that everything possible is being done.
“I trust darling Cicely is not burdened by the many letters we have written to her – my own four, and Rupert’s three, as well as those of her other friends on the islands about here. All wished to write, and we did not know how to say no.
“With love to Miss Bruce, I am, dear judge, your attached and sorrowing friend,
NANNY SINGLETON.”
Letter number two:
“ROMNEY, Saturday Morning.
“MY DEAR MR. TENNANT, – My husband has just received your letter, and as he is much crippled by his rheumatism this morning, he desires me to answer it immediately, so that there may be no delay.
“We both supposed that Dr. Knox had written to you. Probably while he was here there were so many things to take up his time that he could not; and I happen to know that as soon as he reached Charleston, day before yesterday, he was met by this unexpected proposition to join a private yacht for a cruise of several months; one of the conditions was that he was to go on board immediately (they sailed the same evening), and I dare say he had time for nothing but his own preparations, and that you will hear from him later. My husband says, however, that he can give you all the details of the case, which was a simple one. Your brother overestimated his strength, he should not have attempted that journey to Savannah; it was too soon, for his wound had not healed, and the fatigue brought on a dangerous relapse, from which he could not rally. He died from the effects of that cruel shot, Mr. Tennant; his valuable life has fallen a sacrifice (in my husband’s opinion) to the present miserable condition of our poor State, where the blacks, our servants, who are like little children and need to be led as such, – where these poor ignorant creatures are put over us, their former masters; are rewarded with office; are intrusted with dangerous weapons – a liberty which in this case has proved fatal to one of the higher race. It seems to my husband as if the death of Ferdinand Morrison should be held up as a marked warning to the entire North; this very superior, talented, and engaging young man has fallen by the bullet of a negro, and my husband says that in his opinion the tale should be told everywhere, on the steps of court-houses and in churches, and the question should be solemnly asked, Shall such things continue? – shall the servant rule his lord?
“We are much alarmed by the few words in Judge Abercrombie’s letter (received this morning) concerning our darling Cicely, and we beg you to send us a line daily. Or perhaps Miss Bruce would do it, knowing our anxiety? I pray that the dear child, whom we all so fondly love, may be better very soon; but I will be anxious until I hear.
“As I sent a long letter to the judge last evening, I will not add more to this. Our sympathy, dear Mr. Tennant, with your irreparable loss is heartfelt; you do not need our assurances of that, I know.
“Mr. Singleton desires me to present his respects. And I beg to remain your obedient servant,
N. SINGLETON.”