Jupiter Lights Part 51

"So it is with me," said Paul.

"No, it is _not_. And it's for that reason I am leaving you."

Paul made no more use of words. What she had said had left no impression upon him--no impression of importance. He had never been so much in love with her as at this moment.

"Don't you see how I am suffering?--I cannot bear it. Oh, leave me! let me go! Another minute and I shall not have the strength.--Don't kiss me again. Listen! _I_ shot Ferdie, your brother. I--I!"

Paul's arms dropped. "Ferdie? Poor Ferdie?" The tears rushed to his eyes. "Why, some negroes did it."

"There were no negroes. It was I."

He stood there as if petrified.

With desperate courage, she launched her canoe. "You see now that I had to go. You could not marry a woman who--Not even if she did it to save--" She waited an instant, looking at him. He did not speak. She pushed off, lingering a moment longer. "Forgive me for trying to deceive you those few days," she said. Then, with quick strokes, she sent the boat westward. After a while, she changed her position, and, taking the other paddle, she began to row, so that she could look back the longer.

His figure remained motionless for many minutes; then he sat down on the edge of his canoe. Thus she left him, alone under Jupiter Light.

x.x.xI.

When Eve reached the camp, after her parting with Paul, Cicely was waiting for her on the beach, alone; apparently she had sent every one away. "Well?" she said, as the canoe grated on the sand.

"I told him," Eve answered.

"Everything?"

"Everything."

"And he did not--?"

"No, he did not."

For an instant Cicely's face expressed keen sympathy. Then her expression changed. "You did it, you know. You'll have to pay for it!"

"Will you help me to get away?" Eve asked.--"I cannot see him again."

"And do you imagine that by any chance he wishes to see _you_?" demanded Cicely, sarcastically.

"But he will have to come back here--he must; let me go away before he comes. We were leaving to-morrow in any case; help me off now," Eve pleaded.

Cicely surveyed her with pitiless eyes; the once strong Eve now looked at her imploringly, her face despairing, her voice broken. Having had her satisfaction, the vindictive little creature turned, and, going back to the lodge, began to issue orders with imperative haste, as though she had but one wish in the world, namely, to help Eve; Mrs. Mile found herself working as she had never worked before; the Irishmen tumbled over each other; Porley and the cook constantly gallopaded--no other word could describe their gait. The judge worked fiercely; he helped in launching the canoes until the blood rushed to his head; he ran after the Irishmen; he carried Jack, he scolded Porley. And then, during one of these journeys, his strength failed so suddenly that he was obliged to sit down; as there was no bench near, he sat down on the ground.

Soon afterwards Mrs. Mile came by.

"Dear me! Do let me a.s.sist you," she said sweetly.

"I am merely looking at the lake; it is charming this morning," replied the judge, waving his hand.

"I could a.s.sist you _so_ well," said the nurse, coming nearer, "knowing, as I do, the exact position of _all_ the muscles."

"Muscles, madam? It's more than I do! May I ask you to pa.s.s on?"

One of the Irishmen next appeared, carrying Jack's pillows and toys.

"Can you tell me where Mr. Hollis is?" demanded the judge, still seated.

"Mr. Hollis, surr? Yes, surr. Think he's gone fishing, surr."

"D--n him! He takes a nice time for it--when we're sweating here,"

muttered the judge, angrily.

But poor Hollis was fishing only in a figurative sense, and in bitter waters. He had sent for Paul--yes; but he could not stay to witness his return with Eve; (he had not the slightest doubt but that Eve would return with him). He shook hands with Paul upon his arrival, and made a number of jokes, as usual. But soon after the younger man's canoe had started eastward in search of Eve, a second canoe, with Hollis paddling, stole quietly away, going in the opposite direction. Its occupant reached Port aux Pins, in due time. He remained there but a few hours.

A month later a letter came to Paul from a small town near the base of the Rocky Mountains. "You see, when I got back to Port aux Pins, it sort of came over me that I'd go west. People are more lively out here, and not so crowded. I've got hold of a capital thing in raisins, in southern California. If that fails, there is stock-raising, and plenty of other things; and the same old auctioneer line. I've left a trifle in the savings-bank for Jacky. Perhaps you'll take charge of it for him? You'll hear from me again soon.--C. HOLLIS."

But Paul never heard from him; from that moment all trace of him was lost. Ferdie, if he had known Hollis, would have had a vision of him making his way year by year farther westward, always attired in the black coat and tall hat (which marked his dignity as a lawyer), whether voyaging in a prairie schooner, chopping wood at a camp, hunting elk, or searching for ore. But Paul had no such visions, he did not see human lives as _tableaux-vivants_. He was sincerely sorry that Hollis had vamosed in that way. But he understood it too.

The trifle turned out to be eight hundred dollars. It was regularly entered to little Jack's account, and there was a pa.s.s-book with his full name, "John Frederick Bruce." "Bruce,--that did it," thought Paul; "he could give it to the _child_. Poor old Kit! it must have been all he had."

Cicely's generalship was excellent; in less than half an hour the three canoes were ready, and the judge, Porley and Jack, Eve, Cicely herself, with three of the men to row, took their places; the boats glided out from the sh.o.r.e, turning towards the west. Mrs. Mile bowed gravely to the judge, with an air of compunction; she knew what an impression she had made upon that poor old man; she was afraid that she had not done right!

Mrs. Mile was left in charge of the camp to await the arrival of Paul Tennant.

The canoes were out all night. At dawn the little party found refuge on one of the North Sh.o.r.e steamers, and began the long voyage down the chain of lakes, stopping again at the beautiful city of Cleveland, thence by railway to New York, and from there southward by sea. On the ninth morning of their journey their ocean steamer turned her bows towards the distant land, a faint line on the right; by noon, she was making her way along a winding channel, which was indicated here and there in the water by buoys painted white, which looked like ducks; the Atlantic was very calm, its hue was emerald green; it was so clear that one could see the great jelly-fish floating down below. The judge, with his hands clasped on his cane's head, stood looking eagerly at everything. His joy was deep, he felt himself an exile returning home.

And oh! how beautiful home was! To him, this Southern coast was fair as Paradise; he welcomed the dark hue of the Southern trees, he welcomed the neglected fields, he even welcomed the broken-down old houses here and there. For at least they were not staring, they were not noisy; to the judge, the smart new houses of Port aux Pins--those with Mansard roofs--had seemed to shout and yell. Three negro fishermen, pa.s.sing in a row-boat with a torn sail, were eminently worthy creatures; they were not the impudent, well-dressed mulattoes of the North, who elbowed him off the pavements, who read newspapers on steamers with the air of men of the world. When the winding channel--winding through water--came to an end at the mouth of an inlet, the white sand-hills on each hand were more beautiful to his eyes than the peaks of the Alps, or the soft outline of Italian mountains. "G.o.d bless my country!" was the old man's fervent thought. But his "country" was limited; it was the territory which lies between the St. Mary's River and the Savannah.

At the little port within the inlet they disembarked, and took the small steamer of the Inside Route, which was to carry them through the sounds to Romney. Night had come on, dark and quiet; clouds covered the sky; the air was warm, for it was still summer here. The dusky sh.o.r.es, dimly visible on either hand, gave a sense of protection after the vastness of the ocean; the odors of flowers reached them, and seemed sweet after its blank, cold purity. Cicely, with Porley and Jack, was on the deck near the stern; the judge was now with them, now at the prow, now up-stairs, now down-stairs; he could not be still. Eve sat by herself on the forward deck, gazing through the darkness at the water; she could not see it save here and there in broken gleams, where the lights from the lower cabin shone across it; she heard the rushing sound made by the great paddle-wheels as they revolved unseen behind her, and the fancy came to her that she should like to be lashed to the outer rim of one of them, and be carried up and down through the cool water. Towards ten o'clock a beam shone out ahead. "See it?" said the judge, excitedly, coming to show it to her. "Jupiter Light!"

And Eve remembered that less than a year before she had landed here for the first time, a woman imperious, sufficient to herself; a woman who was sure that she could direct her own course; in addition, a woman who supposed herself to be unhappy. How like child's play did this all seem now--her certainties, and her pride, and her supposed sorrow! "If I could die, wouldn't that be the best thing for me, as well as for Paul?

A way out of it all? The first shock over, I should be but a memory to him; I should not be a miserable haunting presence, wretched myself, and making him wretched too. I wonder--I wonder--is it wrong to try to die?"

The stern Puritan blood of her father in her answered, "One must not give up until one has exhausted every atom of one's strength in the contest."

"But if it is all exhausted? If--" Here another feeling came sweeping over her. "No, I cannot die while he is in the world; in spite of my misery, I want to be here if he is here. Perhaps no knowledge of anything that happens here penetrates to the next world; if that is the case, I don't want to be there, no matter how beautiful it may be. I want to stay where I can hear of Paul."

After they had left the boat, and Pomp and Plato were hoisting the trunks into one of the wagons, Cicely came up.

"Eve, you must stay with me more, now that we are here; you mustn't be always off by yourself."

"I thought you preferred it."

"Yes, through the journey. But not now. It's a great deal worse for me now than it is for you; you have left Paul behind, but I am going to see Ferdie in a moment or two. I shall see him everywhere--in the road, at the door, in our own room; he will stand and look at me."

"Well, you will like that."

"No, for it will be only a mockery; I shall not be able to put my arms round him; he won't kiss me."