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. Pa.s.sion made it short, a pa.s.sion of jealous despair.

Reaching the town at last, she pa.s.sed 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.

_The first:_ "_Monday._ "Break it to Cicely. Dear Ferdie died at dawn.

"SABRINA ABERCROMBIE."

_The second:_ _"Monday._ "Morrison died this morning. Telegraph your wishes.

"EDWARD KNOX, M.D."

_The third:_ "Wednesday._

"Morrison buried this afternoon. Address me, Charleston Hotel, Charleston.

"EDWARD KNOX, M.D."

"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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 acc.u.mulation 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."