Up The Hill And Over Part 24

They were paddling toward her so that her light fell full on the doctor's face--a clean cut, virile face, manly, stern, yet with a whimsical sweetness hidden somewhere.

"How handsome he is!" thought Esther, exactly as the moon intended.

"Strong, too," her thought added as the light picked out his well-set shoulders and the sweep of the arm which sped the paddle so lightly yet so strongly up and down. Clear, yet soft, the moon showed no touch of grey in the hair (although the grey was there) nor did she point out the markings which were the legacy of strenuous years. Seen so, he appeared no older than she who watched shyly from girlish eyes.

With a little shiver of utmost content Esther settled herself against the thwart of the canoe.

Manlike he did not know the meaning of that shiver.

"Fool that I am!" he exclaimed. "You are cold, and behold we have left behind the shawl of Mrs. Sykes' grandmother!"

"Indeed we have not! The dog would have torn it to bits. I a.s.sure you the shawl of the venerated ancestress was in the canoe before I was."

"Then wrap yourself up. It is wonderful how cool the nights are."

Esther was not cold. But it is sometimes pleasant to be commanded. This is what enables man to persist in a certain pleasing delusion regarding woman's natural att.i.tude. When she occasionally pleases herself by a simulation of subjection he immediately thrills with pride, crying, "Aha! I have her mastered!" Of course he finds out his mistake later.

It pleased Esther, though not cold, to wrap herself in the shawl and it pleased Callandar to see her do it. I a.s.sure you it left the whole question of the subjection of women quite untouched.

The moon knew all about it but, feminine herself, she favoured the deception. Around the girl's dark head she drew a circle of light. The branching tendrils of her hair, all alive and fanlike now in the coolness of the night, made a nimbus of black and silver from which her shadowed face shone like a faint pure pearl. As he seemed younger, so did she seem older; under the moon she was no longer a child, but a woman with mysterious eyes.

An impulse came to him--the rare impulse of confidence! Suddenly it seemed that what he had mistaken for self-sufficiency had been in reality loneliness. He had learned to live to himself not because he was of himself sufficient but because no one else, save the b.u.t.ton Moulder, had ever come within speaking distance. Lorna Sinnet, for all his admiration of her, had established no claim upon his confidence, yet now, with this young girl, whom he had known but a few weeks, a new need developed--a need to talk of himself! A primitive need indeed, but, like all primitive needs, compelling.

We need not follow the history. Perhaps, reported, it would not seem very lucid. There were blanks, unsaid things, twists of phrase, eloquent nothings which, wonderfully understandable in themselves, do not report well. Somehow he must have made it plain, for Esther understood it and understood him, too, in a way which we, who have never sailed with him under the moon, cannot hope to do. Faults of expression are no hindrance to this kind of understanding. He did not talk well, was clumsy, not at all eloquent, but magically she reconstructed the hopes and dreams of his ambitious youth. From a few bald phrases she fashioned the thunderbolt which shattered them, saw him stunned, then alive again, struggling. With every ready imagination she leaped full upon the fires of an ambition which accepted no check but fed upon difficulty and overleapt obstacles. Between stories of his early college life, her sympathy sensed the deadly strain which his narrative missed and, long before he mentioned it, her foresight had descried the coming of hard won success.

But the really vital thing, the core of the short history, she followed slowly word by word, anxiously. It told of wonders which she did not know--love, pa.s.sion, despair! Now indeed he seemed to be speaking in a strange language--yet not strange entirely. She hid each broken phrase in her heart, knowing them rare, and wondering at the treasure entrusted to her. Some of her girlhood she left behind her as she listened.

Something new, yet surely old, stirred faintly. What was this love he spoke of? The breath of bygone pa.s.sion brushed across her untouched soul and left it trembling!

Into the long silence which followed the story her voice drifted like a sigh.

"If she could only have lived until you came!"

It was of the girl wife she thought. Her heart was full of an aching pity for that other girl whom life had cheated of her sweetest gift.

More than the man who had lived out a bitter expiation, did she pity her who had missed the fight, slipped out of the struggle. Death seemed to Esther such a terrible thing. The new life stirring in her shuddered at the thought of mortality. That breath of the divine which we name Love began already to proclaim itself immortal.

Yet Molly, that other girl, had loved--and died.

The doctor, too, was lost in self communings. Already, with the words not cold upon his lips, he was surprised that he had told the story. How could he? Why had he? That pitiful little story of Molly which had been too sacred for the touch of a word. Above all, why had the telling been a relief? It was a relief, he knew that. Somewhere, in the silver waters of Pine Lake he had buried a burden. He felt lighter, younger. Had his very love for Molly become a load whose proper name was remorse? Had his heart harboured regret and fear under the name of sorrow? Or had he never loved at all, never really sorrowed? Had the thing he called love been but a boy's hot pa.s.sion caught in the grip of a man's awakening will, a mistake made irrevocable by a stubbornness of purpose which could not face defeat? Whatever it had been, it had come to be a burden.

And the burden had lightened--it pressed no longer. In a word, he was free! He was his own man again, unafraid, able to look into his heart, to open all the windows--no dark corners, no haunting ghosts! He could enter now without the dread of echoing footsteps or wistful, half-heard whisperings. The shade of pretty, childish Molly would vex no more.

The relief of it--the pain of it! It was like a new birth.

Meanwhile the strong, sure strokes were bringing them swiftly nearer the opposite sh.o.r.e where yellow dots of light proclaimed the position of the summer cottages. One dot, larger, detached itself from the others and indicated the flare on the end of the landing float. Outlines began to be darkly discernible, the moon's silver mirror was shivered by lances of gold. Very soon their journey would be ended.

The paddle dipped more slowly. Esther sighed, and sat up straighter.

Considering all the trouble they had taken, neither of them seemed overjoyed to be so near the desired haven.

"We are nearly there," said Callandar obviously.

Esther looked backward over their shining wake. Something precious seemed to be slipping away on those fairy ripples. Yet all she could find to say was--

"We have come very fast. You must be tired."

Strange little commonplaces, how they take their due of all the wonderful hours of life! Esther wriggled out of the shawl, smoothed her hair, arranged her ruffled collar. Callandar shipped his paddle and resumed his coat.

"Where to, now?" he asked practically.

"There is only one landing, we shall be right on it in a moment.

Then--there are several of the cottagers whom I know. But I think Mrs.

Burton will be the best. She has often asked me to visit her and is such a dear that the present unexpected arrival will not make me less welcome."

"That's good! As for me, I'll make for the station and send the telegrams. They won't be seriously anxious yet, do you think?

Then--there is a train I think you said?"

"You have missed that. But there is a very early morning train, a milk train--O gracious!" Esther broke off with a start of genuine consternation. "To-morrow is Sunday!"

"Naturally!" in surprise.

"How horribly unfortunate! The milk train doesn't run on Sunday!"

"Does the milk object to Sunday travelling?"

"Don't joke!" forlornly. "It's dreadful that it should be Sunday. People will talk!"

"Oh, will they?" The doctor was immensely surprised. "Why?"

"Because it's Sunday."

"What has Sunday got to do with it? They can't talk. Here you are safe and sound with your friend Mrs. Burton by 9 o'clock, an intensely respectable hour even in Coombe. What can they say?"

"But it's Sunday! You will return home, by rail, on Sunday. Every one will know. Your breaking of the Sabbath will be put down to careless pleasuring. It will hurt your practice terribly!"

Callandar laughed heartily. But before he could reply the quick bursting out of a blaze upon the sh.o.r.e startled them both. "What is it?" he asked apprehensively.

"Only a bonfire! Some one is giving a bonfire party. It is quite the fashionable thing. There will be songs and speeches with lemonade and cake. Oh, hurry! We shall be in time for the programme."

The mysterious woman, born of the moon, was gone. In her place was a rumple-haired, bright-eyed child. Callandar took up the paddle with a whimsical smile.

"Sit still or you'll overturn the canoe!" he said warningly. And across the narrowing stretch of water floated the opening sentiments of the patriotic cottagers.

"O Cana_dah_, our heritage, our love--"

CHAPTER XIV