Peggy Raymond's Vacation Part 26

Peggy's instinctive leap took no account of the depth of the stream. She could have drowned with Dorothy. It was quite impossible for her to stand by and look on while Dorothy drowned. Luckily the water, though deep at this point, was not over her head. She floundered to her feet choking and blowing, and clutched desperately at a small, damp object the current was sweeping past her. Instantly two arms went about her neck in a frantic embrace.

"Dorothy, don't hold so tight. I can't breathe."

The appeal was useless. Dorothy was beyond heeding any admonition but that of the blind instinct of self-preservation. Peggy would not have believed that there was such strength in the slender little arms.

Gasping, and with reeling senses, she edged step by step nearer the sh.o.r.e, groping with her disengaged hand for the sloping bit of beach where she could deposit her burden. When at length her fingers came in contact with the pebbly edge the bright summer world was a black mist before her unseeing eyes.

Luckily the contact with mother earth suggested to Dorothy that here was something more stable than the swaying support to which she had been clinging so desperately. Her hold relaxed, and a minute later she was scrambling up the slope into the gra.s.s and bushes, caring for nothing except to get as far as possible from the terrible water. Peggy caught her breath, waited an instant for brain and vision to clear, and then, with the aid of the obliging willow, climbed dripping from the stream.

For a minute or two she gave herself up to the luxury of being frightened. Shuddering and sick, she gazed over her shoulder at the rippling water, while one monotonous thought repeated itself over and over in her brain like a chant. "She might have been drowned. I might have been drowned. We might both have been drowned." Peggy was conscious of an overwhelming, panic-stricken longing for her mother.

Dorothy was sitting back in the bushes, crying with a l.u.s.tiness which suggested that no serious consequences were to be apprehended from her plunge bath, beyond the possibility of taking cold. "I don't like 'sploring islands," she sobbed. "Let's go back, Aunt Peggy."

Peggy turned sharply. Down the stream floated the overturned canoe, already at a distance which made its recapture hopeless. A little in advance was a white straw hat, a pert bow acting as a sail. Not till that moment had it occurred to Peggy that her troubles were not yet over. Her grat.i.tude for her escape from death was tempered by irritated dismay.

"Why, Dorothy, we can't go back! We've got to wait till they come for us. How provoking!"

Nothing was to be gained by fretting, however, and luckily other matters were soon absorbing Peggy's attention. She wrung the water from Dorothy's drenched hair and clothing, and set her in the sun to dry, a forlorn little figure of a mermaid. And then she performed a like service for herself, stopping at intervals to lift her voice in a ringing "Hal-loo!"

"Oh, dear! We're going to be so late getting home," scolded Peggy.

"It'll be dark, and none of us know the roads very well." She looked longingly at the point around which at any moment a canoe might appear.

"It's going to take some time to land us," she reflected, "as long as these canoes can't carry any more than two. Oh, dear, Dorothy! How much trouble you've made." And the pensive mermaid wept again, with the submissive penitence which disarms censure.

Over in the west above the treetops, the sky grew pink, deepened to crimson, paled to ashes-of-roses. The sparkling lights on the water were snuffed out one by one. The air was full of sounds, shrill-voiced insects cheeping, the pipe of frogs, the twittering of birds seeking their nests.

The downward droop of the corners of Dorothy's mouth became more p.r.o.nounced.

"I don't like that noise," she protested. "It sounds as if things were all crying."

Peggy hugged the little penitent close. She did not like the sound herself. "You're pretty near dry, aren't you?" she said, trying to speak lightly.

Dorothy's answer was a grieved whimper, "Aunt Peggy, when are they coming for us?"

"I don't know, dear." The resolute cheerfulness of Peggy's tone gave no hint of her inward perturbation. What did it mean, she asked herself.

What were the girls thinking of? It was growing dark. She tightened her clasp about Dorothy and the disconsolate little maid snuggled her damp head against Peggy's shoulder, and forgot her troubles in sleep.

Little flickering lights began to play about the island, as the fire-flies lit their fairy lamps. Overhead the stars came out. The warm wind of the summer night sighed through the treetops, and the sad chorus of humble earthly pipers answered from below. It seemed to Peggy as if the dear familiar world with its cheery homes and friendly faces, had been blotted out, and Dorothy and herself were alone on an unfamiliar earth. Yet with all the strange, terrifying loneliness, the stars had never seemed so bright nor the heavenly Father so near.

CHAPTER XIX

THE RESCUE

The picnickers had slept late. Elaine was the first to wake, and she lay for a moment staring at the tranquil sky above her, unable to understand why she was not viewing the ceiling of her bedroom on Friendly Terrace.

Then recollection came, and she raised herself on her elbow just as Amy opened her eyes.

"Did Peggy call?" inquired Amy stretching lazily. "Is it time to wake up?"

"I didn't hear Peggy," Elaine admitted. "But I should say that it was high time for us to be stirring, unless we're going to spend the night here."

At the sound of voices, one sleeper after another gave signs of returning animation. Priscilla sat up languidly, glanced at the little watch she wore on a leather strap about her wrist, and uttered a surprised exclamation.

"Why, it's five o'clock! I thought Peggy said we were to start back at five."

"We've slept away all the afternoon," Amy commented in some vexation, as she jumped to her feet with an energy in striking contrast to her late la.s.situde. "I don't see why Peggy didn't wake us."

"Perhaps she didn't know how late it was getting." Priscilla, too, was on her feet. "Peggy!" she called. "Oh, Peggy!" and then stood listening vainly for the reply.

"She took Dorothy and went somewhere," Amy explained. "That was the last thing I saw. Oh, Peggy! Peggy Raymond!"

Repeated calls were fruitless. "Perhaps she went to the barn to see about the horses," was Aunt Abigail's contribution to the jumble of suggestions, and Priscilla and Ruth promptly volunteered to test its accuracy. They found that the rheumatic old man had Nat and Bess already harnessed.

"Somebody said you wanted 'em for five o'clock," he explained. "'Twasn't neither of you two. A pretty girl in white."

"Oh, yes, Peggy! But we can't find her. We thought perhaps she'd been down here."

As the rheumatic old man was unable to give them news of Peggy, the girls returned to their companions at a pace which unconsciously grew more and more rapid, as they discussed the situation. "Good joke on Peggy," Ruth said with a little laugh. "Because she's always the one that's on hand, no matter who's late."

"Yes, it's certainly a joke on Peggy." And Priscilla also laughed with a determined heartiness. But with all her air of amus.e.m.e.nt, she was conscious of a vague uneasiness.

Just as they reached the knoll they were met by Amy and Elaine. "She's out in one of the canoes," Amy said quickly, before the others could explain that their search had been without success.

"Oh!" Priscilla's sigh was expressive of relief. "Well, she'd better come in now. The old man has harnessed, and it's quite a little after five."

"We couldn't see her anywhere." Elaine took up the story as Amy was silent. "But one of the canoes is gone, so, of course, she's taken Dorothy for a little ride."

The girls were chattering like blackbirds as they went down the slope to the river. Elaine recalled Peggy's fondness for the water, and Amy remarked that it was almost a relief to have Peggy behindhand for once, she had such a mania for looking out for everybody else. The other girls contributed observations equally important, and each tried to hide from the others, if not from herself, the fact that her persistent and voluble cheerfulness was designed to silence the uneasy whisperings of an anxiety that was waxing stronger, moment by moment.

Aunt Abigail was standing at the water's edge, straining her old eyes this way and that. For the first time that summer she looked her full age.

"Call again, girls!" she commanded peremptorily. "It isn't at all like Peggy to be so late, and worry us this way. I don't like it."

It was really a relief to have some one voice an anxiety so that they could all unite in demonstrating its utter unreasonableness. But to relieve Aunt Abigail's mind, they shouted in chorus, "Peggy! Peg-gy Raymond!" and heard as they listened, the echo repeating their summons more and more faintly with each reiteration. That was all. No answering cheery hail. No musical dip of the paddle in the stream.

It was during one of these tense moments of listening that Elaine started violently, and in spite of the sunburn, which in her case had not had time to deepen into tan, she turned pale. Instantly she was bombarded by excited questions.

"What was it? What did you see, Elaine?"

"Why, I guess it's nothing. You look, girls, that dark thing on the water way over. It isn't--it can't be--"

But it _was_ an overturned canoe. The rheumatic old man who had come up with the team towed it ash.o.r.e, in the wake of its sister bark.

As if in a dreadful dream, the girls heard the quavering tones of the old voice, his gray head shaking the while.

"Two of 'em, you say. The pretty girl in white and the little one. And me a-waiting on, for I don't know what. It don't seem fair, somehow."

It was ten o'clock that evening when Jerry Morton heard the news. Ill tidings travel fast, even without the help of modern invention. One of the Snooks boys, not Andy but Elisha, an older brother, brought the word, and his manner was suggestive of a certain complacency as if he felt that his own importance was increased by his momentous tidings. He found Jerry sitting on the steps, though it was long past bedtime, his chin on his hand, and his unblinking gaze fixed upon the stars, as if he were trying to stare them out of countenance.