"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 repet.i.tions 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, pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.eward 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 sh.o.r.e. "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--"