April, coming to thaw the ice on Northern streams, and to mould the first buds that started out timidly as a young artist's efforts at creation, also dissolved the spell of solitude which had so long encompassed Jessie.
Lance was ready to build the paper-mill, and had written that he would take the rail southward as soon as possible. It had been agreed at Christmas-time that the wedding should come off in May or June. Activity began in the turpentine plantation; the trees were "boxed" and "tapped;" the sap commenced to flow. The air grew milder, the stars shone with a more hazy lustre in the night heavens, and birds renewed their notes in the thickets about the manor, or flew with transient greetings over the lonely land, on their mission of heralding the return of spring to higher latitudes. But Jessie could not rid herself of the mournfulness and the partial lethargy that had so long clung to her. She knew that Lance was coming, and her heart throbbed the more warmly: she waited eagerly to feel his arms clasped round her. Yet a lingering fear persuaded her that the happiness might still be deferred or, in the end, frustrated.
It was in such a mood that she leaned, one evening, on the railing of the old veranda, vaguely musing and inclined to sadness. There was no certainty as to the hour of Lance's advent, for he had not named a time, and into that far-off nook where she lived the lightning of the telegraph never penetrated. But of late Jessie had adopted a custom of straying out upon the veranda, as if she expected to see Lance approaching.
Suddenly she heard the click and crunch of unwonted wheels upon the drive near the house. She started up and listened, in a tremor of incredulous delight. The sounds drew nearer; presently a light flashed across the moist branches of the shade-trees, and the next moment she beheld the lanterns of a carriage, dimly illuminating its battered varnish, the smoking backs of two horses and the muffled torso of a sable driver. Then Lance's young, energetic face appeared in the square of the carriage-door, faintly roseate with the light from the house. He was fumbling at the door-handle before the wheels stopped turning.
The sable driver subsided completely into the depths of his sableness, as the two figures clasped each other at the top of the steps.
"Ah, Ned, I have waited for you so long!"
"And so have I for you, dear."
"Do you know, I felt almost as if I were that poor Gertrude, waiting and waiting still?"
"Youare, dearest—you aremyGertrude!"
And then the colonel, always discreet, allowed himself to be seen in the hallway, prepared to welcome the wanderer.
Lance barely restrained himself until the next day before seeking an opportunity to tell Jessie about the drawing which Hedson had brought from England.
"You've written me next to nothing about Adela Reefe," he said to her. "But I suppose you have kept on taking charge of her letters for Dennie."
"Oh yes," said Jessie; "he brought them all the way up to me. Poor fellow!"
"Why do you call him that?"
"It seems so severe for him, having her stay away at such a distance, and for so long. He's dreadfully in love with her."
"Yes, I know he is," Lance confessed. "Those times when I was with him so much, and you hardly liked it, I was talking with him about her and trying to console him. He let me into his confidence, and told me how he was afraid he had driven her from him and should never get her back. But Sylv used to send an encouraging message, now and then. Has he sent any more?"
"Sylv has hardly written at all," said Jessie.
Lance mused aloud: "That's strange."
"Yes," responded his sweetheart, in a tone as if she were about to say more; but she did not go on.
At this point Lance thought it best to bring forward his little surprise. Excusing himself, he went to his room and came back with the drawing. "By the way," he began, reseating himself, "I wonder if Adela has changed much in looks, under the influence of education. It would be curious to see her, wouldn't it?"
"I saw her," said Jessie, "just before she went back, after you left us, at Christmas."
"Well, then, you can tell. What do you think of this?" And her lover produced the portrait.
Jessie stared at it in some astonishment. "Where under the sun did that come from?" she exclaimed. "Was it done for you?"
"What do you think of it?" he repeated.
"It isn't perfect," was the answer; "but still, I should know it, I think. Why, Ned, are you cheating me? It isn't meant for Adela, is it? You naughty boy, I could almost think it was an attempt to show howIshall look when I'm stouter! It's a joke."
"Then you think it's like you?" he inquired. "Does it strike you?"
"I won't say another word, until you tell mewhatit is."
"It is a picture of Gertrude Wylde," Lance returned.
Then there was silence for a moment. Jessie took the drawing and looked at it intently. Her voice was low, and quivered with a sort of frightened tremor when she next spoke. "Why didn't you tell me at first, Ned? And what did you mean by speaking as if it were Adela Reefe? Itislike her; and it is like me, too. Oh, what this secret? What is the meaning of it all?"
"As well as I can make it out," said Lance, "the meaning is that Adela is a direct descendant of Gertrude Wylde, and a kinswoman of yours. The only thing remaining, in my mind, is to find out whether her father or his family came from Croatan. If that is proved—"
"And if that is proved, what then?"
"I know of nothing to follow, except that we should recognize her as a relative."
"Never!" cried Jessie. "This is a mere dream. It's impossible to prove her descent from our stock. I can have nothing to do with her."
Her vehemence was such that another man might have suspected some underlying motive of feminine jealousy. But Lance merely laughed. "Oh, there's no legal claim involved," said he, lightly. "Of course, I don't expect that anything tremendous is going to happen, even if she does turn out to be of your blood. But suppose we appoint your father arbitrator as to this portrait?"
Jessie consented, and they referred the picture to Colonel Floyd.
"If this is a well-authenticated reproduction," said the colonel, deploying his finest hand-book manner, "the appearances would seem to indicate some connection. 'Pon my soul, I never noticed any resemblance till now; but while the similarity to our Jessie is perceptible, it is not nearly so pronounced as the likeness to this Adela Reefe. Is it possible that an inherited type of countenance should last so long, under such conditions? Very singular; very strange!"
He did not evince enthusiasm, and he paced the room restlessly.
"What we want is to go and see old Mr. Reefe," suggested Lance, "and ask him about Croatan."
The colonel fell in with this proposition; and on the morrow they rode down to Hunting Quarters. It was not an easy matter to draw Reefe into conversation; but they at last succeeded in pinning him down to facts, and, without discovering their purpose, he assured them that, to the best of his knowledge, his predecessors had lived in the region of Croatan, until the time of his father, who crossed Pamlico Sound and settled near Hunting Quarters. To make a clean breast of it, he also admitted that his stock probably contained Indian blood; but of this he was rather proud than otherwise.
"It is settled," said Lance, when he came to tell Jessie the result of the inquiry. "There can be no reasonable doubt now. I must go up and let Adela and Sylv know about it at once."
Jessie leaned back in her chair and fixed her mild gray eyes upon him. She had never looked more captivating than at that instant, the side-part in her hair giving an accent of dainty self-reliance to her whole pose and demeanor. "Let me ask you a question," she said.
"Willingly."
"About poor Dennie. Has it ever occurred to you, Ned, that you may be doing him a great injury by sending Adela off in this way, and throwing her with Sylv?"
"No, of course not," answered Lance, somewhat nettled. "Would I have been a party to it if I had thought so?" But the mention of Sylv in this sort of way caused him an inward shudder. If there were any peril of Dennie's losing Adela, why should it be Sylv who should win her?
"I think you are helping to separate them," Jessie continued, "and you ought to reflect, and stop. Besides, why should you go on so, mixing yourself up in her affairs?"
"I'm not. I ought at least to see her and tell her my discovery."
Jessie suddenly rose. "Ihatethat woman!" she cried, sharply. And, at the same instant, Lance saw his engagement ring flashing upon her finger.
"You shall not hate her," he declared, with passion. "She is your kinswoman—one of us. It isn't right that you should say that, and I won't endure it."
"Never mind whether you will endure it or not," Jessie retorted. "She has occupied enough of your attention already."
"My dear child," Lance remonstrated, "it's impossible that you should be jealous of that girl! But what else can you mean? What do you demand?"
"I think that you ought to just drop her, from this time on," said Jessie, closing her lips decisively.
There are scientific thinkers who tell us that the will is not a cause, but merely a state of consciousness resulting from previous conditions of the nerves and the emotions. However this may be, Lance's will asserted itself in strong opposition to Jessie's. The probability that Adela was a lineal descendant of Gertrude Wylde appealed strongly to his imagination. Now that his theory seemed so well established, he was resolved to have her kinship acknowledged; and, further, he experienced a strong attraction toward her, the stress of which he did not fully comprehend. He himself represented the man who had loved Gertrude, who had vainly searched for and lost her. Was it not fair that he should have some hand in the destiny of the girl thus reclaimed, after the lapse of centuries, from the oblivion which had overtaken Gertrude's life?
"I will not drop her," he said, unyieldingly. "And, what's more, Jessie, I am going to see her, and shall stand by her."
Exactly what was to be the issue of Lance's sentiment respecting Adela, it would have been hard to say. No fatal breach had as yet been made in his relations with Jessie; yet they parted, after the difference which I have just detailed, with a coldness that promised ill; and, for the first time, Lance met the issue that had for weeks past unobtrusively put itself in his way. If Jessie would persist in being so narrow, so unsympathetic, what was to come? And if any trouble from this source should divide them, what was there left to him? Facing this alternative, Lance was forced to perceive that the interest which he had allowed himself to feel in Adela had, unawares, grown into a dangerous emotion. In one way it seemed absurd. In another, it was tragical. Did he actually, in view of the rupture which now seemed likely to occur between himself and Jessie, contemplate such a possibility as giving his life up to Adela? If he were to do that, the question of treachery to his humble friend, Dennis De Vine, would be involved. Nevertheless, some unseen power seemed to propel him toward an erratic solution of this sort. He wondered whether at last the yearning of his ancestor, long ago, was fated to meet fulfilment by his own union with the latest offspring of Gertrude Wylde. No! he would not think of it: he refused to surrender himself to such fantasies. And still he could not escape their importuning.
He was involved in a struggle. He did not know what to make of it; but he resolved to maintain his own dignity, first, by going to see Adela, and then, after that, everything concerning Jessie and himself might be righted. Meanwhile he kept one idea firmly before him, which was, to remain true to Jessie so long as she would let him do so without sacrificing Adela.
But before he had time to carry out his determination of seeing Adela, an unlooked-for incident occurred, which altered the situation materially.
The last bell for the day had sounded at the "academy" where Adela pursued her studies, or rather was pursued by them, for they followed her steps from morning to night in a race with which it was hard to keep even, notwithstanding her prowess. The bell signified freedom for a brief period. When it sounded she was allowed to go out for a walk, the usual discipline of the school having been relaxed in her favor, to admit of her taking her recreation in Sylv's company. Sylv was duly accredited as Dennie's ambassador, to look after Adela's welfare; hence it was considered very proper that he should see her every day. In this way he had taken a great many walks with her.
When the bell rang, therefore, he met her at the gate of the garden surrounding the academy, and they strolled away together. Had Lance seen them at that moment, he would have been surprised by the noticeable change which had come over them both. Adela had now been at school some ten months—nearly a year—and her steady application, with the loss of that out-door life to which she had been accustomed, had subdued the color in her cheeks, though it had not made them pale. The delicate brown tinge was always there. But the stiff black hair that had formerly blown so carelessly about her head was demurely combed and orderly, now, and a serene, womanly thoughtfulness had somehow drifted into the lines of her face, making its wild beauty sweeter.
Sylv, too, had acquired a more polished air. It was not a gawky polish. His clothes were very plain, but he appeared at ease in them; and although his tangled beard was reduced to comparative trimness, it hinted nothing of the incipient dandy. On the whole, they were a very serious and simple pair, who would have looked extremely "countrified" in Richmond, and still more so in New York. But they had altered very much since the days on the shore.
Had Lance seen them then, he would have been surprised—and perhaps displeased—by another thing. This was, that as they moved down the road leading away from the town, they looked so like a pair of lovers.
Ah, while they had been growing so neat and orderly on the surface, and had come to show marks of the educational mould, had they possibly undergone another change of an opposite kind, within? Were their hearts as well regulated, as calm, as their dress and their faces?
Through the long period of their sojourn together, they had lived upon hopes, interests, ambitions common to both. Adela had been fired with zeal for her new occupation; they had talked over their daily successes or reverses every afternoon; and though I have not said much about Sylv's natural refinement, and his quiet, persuasive quality, these two things—combined with constant association—had exercised a great influence upon Adela. Imperceptibly she had grown into a life which belonged to them alone, apart from every one else.
"How did you get along to-day?" asked Sylv.
"All right," said Adela. "But the algebra was hard. It seems as if I couldn't think of anything but squares and roots and coefficients. It appears to me like I'll have to extract the square root of my head right soon; and if I do, there won't be anything left."
"You're getting tired, I reckon," Sylv suggested. "Maybe you ought not to work so much. How would it suit you, Deely, to go home for a few days and rest?"
"Oh, vacation's coming in a few weeks," she answered, wearily. "It ain't that, Sylv. I ain't tired with the work; but it's because my life seems so queer, and I don't know what I want. I don't want to stay here, or to go home. I'm afraid I'll never be happy any more."
They were now in a quiet spot outside of the town. Some willows grew beside the road, which was here carried over a small bridge that covered the gurgling flow of a brook. Sylv stopped short, and eyed her meditatively.
"Not happy?" he questioned. "Why not, Deely? Wouldn't you be if you were with Dennie again?"
Adela paused, too. "I can't tell," she said. "I don't know what is the matter with me, but I don't seem to be satisfied with anything, Sylv. I never can go back to what I was, but I don't see that I can go forward, either."
"But Dennie loves you just the same," said Sylv, rather falteringly.
The girl clasped her hands and gazed absently in front of her. "I know he does," she said, in an inert way. "I know it well enough."
"And you know he has been trying to learn to read, just to please you, and so as to keep up with you as well as he can."
"Yes." But still her face did not lighten. The gathering sadness deepened upon it, if anything. "Oh, why did I come here!" she suddenly cried, despairingly. "If Mr. Lance had not sent me! Ah, what was the use?"
Sylv regarded her compassionately, but he was himself undergoing an anguish that it seemed impossible to withstand.
"Come," he said, soothingly, "let's go down yonder among the trees and talk about it. We'll see if there isn't some way of making you happy. I reckon the time has come for a change, and we ought to see what is needed."
She yielded, as though he were entitled to lead her. Taking his hand, she walked with him down on to the young grass at the side of the highway, and in among the trees alongside the "run." In the retired nook that they came to they seated themselves, while the spring breeze murmured through the light leaves above them, unsuspicious of any woe in the minds of these two young persons.
"I was angry with Dennie," said Adela, speaking low, "and that was why I left him to come here. But he has been so good, and so patient."
"Yes, that he has!" Sylv corroborated, fervently. "Why don't you go back to him?"
The gaze which Sylv fixed upon her, in asking this question, was very unlike that of an impartial and philosophic adviser. His eyes burned with a rapacious though restrained fire. Yet his tone was composed.
Adela broke into moaning. "Why do you ask me that?" she exclaimed. "Oh, don't youknowhow hard it is to go back? Do you think it can ever be the same? I don't want that kind of life any more: I am for something different now. You see, all this studying and thinking and reading has given me a new idea, and there's no one to take a share in it. When I go back and marry Dennie that part of me will be alone. What am I to do; oh, whatamI to do?"
Her distress was so acute that she gave way to tears, which she helplessly tried to press back with a hand at her eyes.
"Don't cry, Deely," said Sylv, taking her other hand. "You're tired out, and you're troubling yourself, but you don't need to. By and by you'll be happy; never fear!"
Adela clung to his hand instinctively. "You're a kind fellow, Sylv," said she, ceasing to sob. "I know you wish me well. But it's all over with me. I ought not to think of anything but Dennie. If I can makehimhappy, why—I ought—to be satisfied." But the stifled tone in which she uttered the words showed how far she fell short of that duty.
Sylv longed to speak more tenderly to her. The touch of her trusting hand in his was maddening. He would have laid down his life, at that instant, to comfort her; and if he was ready to sacrifice his own, what mattered the life and happiness of any other? But there was only one way in which he felt sure that he could secure lasting comfort to her, so far as one man might; and that way he dared not propose. Why had he not foreseen this difficulty and this peril in time to evade them? He had imagined that his whole life depended on books, and here he found that it was nothing as compared with a woman. He had indulged in the tranquil belief that he was a disinterested student; but now he awoke to the fact that he was a reckless lover!
"Deely," he exclaimed, rising, but still keeping her hand in his, "if you don't love Dennie enough to go back to him, you must not do it!"
"And break his heart?" she asked, looking up at him with an effort at reproach.
"I speak to you as his brother," answered Sylv—"his brother, whom he sent here of his own accord to watch over you; and I say that it would be wrong. You would not be happy yourself, and you would find it impossible to make him happy."
Adela drew her hand away. "But I have promised him! And I will keep my promise."
As she spoke she rose erect: he could hear her close her teeth with a grating sound.
"I don't intend to argue about it," he said. "You are free to settle everything your own way. It appeared to me like I must tell you my opinion. That's the end of it, Deely." He paused. "I got a letter from Mr. Lance; says he's got back, and is coming up to see you. ButIam going away to-morrow."
Adela started violently. "Yougoing away!" Then she trembled toward him and laid her hands on his shoulders. "Oh no, no! Don't leave me now, Sylv. Don't go away!"
"I must," he replied. "I've got through. I've done all I can. I must go back to work for Mr. Lance."
Adela's hands still rested on his arms. He could hardly move them otherwise than to enfold and sustain her. Unable to support herself, she drooped and sank toward him for an instant.
"Dear—dear—sister," he almost groaned, "don't despair! Don't give way! I wish I could save you from suffering."
She recovered herself and stood upright before him, looking into his eyes. She trembled, and he longed to embrace her once more, holding her to his heart for as long as he should live. But neither of them made any movement toward such a renewal of her dependence upon him. Steadily, yet with a kind of doubt and fear, they gazed at one another; and the whole story of their hearts was made clear. But not one word of passion was uttered.
"I must leave—must leave to-morrow," Sylv repeated, as they started simultaneously to go back to the school; "and I think I will send Dennie up here." Instead of advancing this proposition with the courage he wanted to show, he made it sound like the knell of all their hopes. Nerving himself, he added: "Shall I tell him you've forgiven him?"
This time, by a prodigious effort, he spoke bravely; yet his eyes, without his knowledge, seemed to beg her to come to the aid of his failing fortitude.
"Shall I tell him?"
"Yes."
"And that you're ready to go with him now?" The faltering look had vanished. A white, still light of triumph rested on his paling face.
"Yes," said Adela again, with trembling lips.
Sylv was on the point of beginning his journey, when Lance walked into his boarding-place with a hearty salutation.
"Isn't this very sudden?" he asked, with pronounced astonishment at Sylv's new move.
"It looks so to you," said the young man. "But I've been thinking it over a long time. It isn't best for me to stay here."
Lance saw that something was held in reserve, but could not conjecture what. "Suit yourself, Sylv," he returned. "If you're satisfied, I ought to be."
"Besides," said Sylv, with the air of having already given one reason, "I ought to do some of that work I promised for you."
"Itwouldbe an advantage to begin exploring the swamp before warm weather comes on," Lance agreed.
"Well, sir, I'm ready to go at it right straight off," said the other.
There was a disproportionate grimness in his tone and manner, Lance imagined. The declaration had apparently cost him an effort.
"Lord bless me, Sylv," he exclaimed, abruptly, "how thin and pale you've grown! I didn't fairly notice it until this moment. It evidently won't do you any harm to have a change."
"No, sir. I have not been feeling well."
"All right. Wait till the afternoon train, and I'll go back to Beaufort with you. I only want to see Adela for a while. Will you come along?"
He did not really want Sylv to accompany him; and perhaps this was manifest in his way of speaking. Yet he was somewhat surprised when the young man, turning aside and pretending to adjust some of the articles in the forlorn miniature trunk he had been packing, said: "No, thank you, Mr. Lance. I said good-by to her last night."
"It's just as well, that way," said Lance, nervously. "I have something important to tell her, and it will be better to see her alone."
Sylv straightened up, and glanced at him almost fiercely. A suspicion occurred to him. "Something important?" he asked. But he did not dare to demand particulars.
Nor did it reassure him much, either, to have Lance answer, "Yes; I'll tell you about it afterward."
For his part, Lance, in noticing Sylv's abstracted behavior, recalled what Jessie had said as to throwing the young fellow so much with Adela, and wondered whether there was any confirmation of her fear in the constraint which had overtaken hisprotégé. But he was so anxious to see Adela, that he did not stop to reflect on that point more than a moment.
Ushered by the matronly principal of the academy into its scrupulously dusted but threadbare parlor, he awaited the girl's advent with a good deal of trepidation. The window-blinds were closed, and the interior was pervaded by a mock twilight. When Adela at last made her appearance, her figure, from the opposite side of the room, looked so dim and uncertain that Lance was strongly reminded of the first time he ever saw her—the time that she rose out of the earth, as it were, and again crumbled back into it.
"Miss Reefe!" he said, scarcely above a murmur.
"Oh, Mr. Lance! Sylv told me you were coming." And she approached him through the dimness of the room, groping, one might say.
They shook hands formally, and to Lance's distraught fancy it seemed as if her fingers withdrew themselves with the recoil of absolute dislike from the touch of his own.
"You're not glad to see me, I'm afraid," he began, boldly.
"Oh yes—yes I am. What makes you think so?"
"I can hardly tell, but I think I should know if you were. It is so dark here I can barely see you. Shall I open a shutter?" He made a movement to do so.
"It is light enough for me," Adela answered; and he at once desisted from his purpose. "Won't you sit down?" she asked.
He accepted the invitation.
They conversed for a few moments about her studies and about what he himself had been doing since they last met. But at length he said: "You never would be able to guess, Adela, why I have come to see you to-day. You told me a very interesting story once—do you remember?—about your people. That was a legend; but now I have a true story to tellyou, which is connected with yours. Would you like to hear it?"
"I always like stories better than anything," said the girl. "Do tell it to me."
Thereupon Lance narrated the tale with which we are familiar, adding the details of the picture, the first clew which he had caught in her resemblance to Jessie, and the extraordinary coincidence of the old rhyme from Wharton Hall. Adela listed intently, without interposing a syllable; but he could hear her breath coming and going, and occasionally she sighed. She was seated in a chair near his own; but, though his eyes were growing used to the gloom of the apartment, he felt her presence more by the warm irradiation of her vitality through the air than by actual vision. From time to time there was an audible flurry of light feet and flitting skirts in the passageway without, or in the rooms above, indicating the movement of young women from one point to another of the scanty scholastic edifice; and once a desk-bell rang punctiliously from a distance. But otherwise they were uninterrupted. As Lance proceeded with his story, the dimness of the light and the random brushing of the breeze against the shutters aided a species of hallucination that laid hold of him. While he retraced the mazes and the by-paths of the tradition that led back so far into the forests and the obscurity of an earlier epoch, the gloom of the wilderness itself seemed to surround him; the leaves of an unknown forest-land muttered and rustled in his ears; he felt like an explorer; he was making his way, he could fancy, toward the goal of his long striving and his harassed desire. Should he not meet, at the end of his wanderings, the object of his search?
When he had finished the story he said: "Youhave Indian blood in your veins, Adela."
Her voice permeated the dusk slowly and hesitatingly: "Yes. But how do you know?"
"I have seen your father, and he has told me." Lance rose and stepped toward the window. "Gertrude Wylde was your ancestress," he declared, "and she was the same woman as Ewayeá in your legend. It is I who have discovered this, and I have brought you, at last, out of all that mystery!"
Flinging the shutters open he stood there, looking toward her. Adela at the same instant left her seat and placed herself before him. Then, for the first time, he could see the change that had crept over her features.
"Good God!" he cried. "What has happened?"
Adela spread her hands out in timid deprecation. "I don't know," she said. "What do you mean?"
"You are so much more—you have grown so like Jessie since I saw you," Lance returned, well-nigh gasping. "If it were not for that darker tint—"
"Mr. Lance," she interrupted, "what can you be thinking of? Why do you talk so excitedly, and why did you come here to tell me this?"
"Because," he said, "I have been intensely interested in the problem. I believe you belong to the line of Gertrude Wylde. If you do, you represent the woman whom my ancestor loved, and you are closely related to Jessie Floyd. Do you suppose it makes any difference to me that Indians came into that line? No; I see in you the lineal descendant of Gertrude, and a kinswoman of the Floyds. I wish to have it clearly understood that you and they are of one family. You must take the place that belongs to you."
"What place?" Adela sighed. "Can you tell what place mine is?"
"Of course I can. Haven't I said what I thought?" But while Lance uttered these words, he noticed how sad and wan she looked, and he also felt the difficulty of bringing her within the circle of life to which he belonged.
"You have made a great mistake," she replied. "I am only Adela Reefe, and I cannot be anything else. Did Sylv tell you? I am going away from here. I shall not stay any longer, for I promised to be Dennie's wife, and I am going to marry him as soon as he comes for me."
"To be Dennie's wife!" exclaimed Lance, instinctively treating the idea as though he had not heard of it before. "Yes; yes; I suppose you are to be. But why should that prevent your being one of us? You will be a kinswoman, a cousin, just the same."
Adela gathered herself up, and spoke with resolution. "I don't know if you are right," she said, "but any way, Mr. Lance, if Iama kinswoman and a cousin, do you think Miss Jessie will want to have me for one?"
The best that Lance could do was to parry this direct thrust. "If you are so," he answered, "what difference can her wish make?"
"I will tell you, easy enough," Adela retorted, proudly. "It is just that I won't have anything to do with people who don't want me for one of them. If I had ever supposed that coming up here to school would make it seem as if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have come. Oh, I didn't know all this when I came! No, no! And I'm sorry I did it. I tried to be grateful to you, Mr. Lance, and I do thank you for your good meaning; but I'm sorry I came."
"Adela," he said, rather coldly, "I can't let you talk in this way. You are proud and angry, and don't know what you're saying. Remember that, whatever happens, I stand by you."
"I don't want any one to stand by me," she returned. "I am all alone, and I will stay so. Suppose you had never come here, Mr. Lance; who would have guessed that I had anything to do with that old English family? I could not have guessed it myself, even. I know you've tried to help me, and now you want to make something different of me from what I always was before. But I'm going back to marry Dennie, and the best thing you can do is to leave me where you found me, and forget all about me. I shall just be Dennie's wife; that's all. I don't ask to be anything else."
It may seem to you unreal that Lance should have been so much exercised regarding Adela's happiness and her future, especially since he was bound to Jessie Floyd by the most sacred promises. Unreal it is, I grant, to people who live by the tinkle of the horse-car, the tick of the clock, and the reading of the newspaper. But this individual, impracticable man—so like many other men who, in dissimilar circumstances, conceive themselves to be prodigiously practical—was bent upon an idea. And he was determined to carry out his idea. He cared more for his theory than he did for himself or for any one besides. It was his ambition to be impartial—to secure the recognition of all rights which he thought were in need of vindication. And so far did he carry that desire, that he was really somewhat bewildered by it; in consequence whereof he held himself ready, at this especial moment, to sacrifice one great obligation to a lesser obligation.
"I'm not going to be satisfied with this result," he said. "I am determined that it shall not be in vain that I have sought you out and found you. Listen to me, Adela! It is a question of justice—in fact, of simple humanity—and I'm bound to have justice done. You may go back to Hunting Quarters, if you like, any day, and marry Dennie; but you ought not to ask to be dropped out of our lives. I wish to see you put where you belong. If you have changed your mind, and do not want to marry Dennie, only tell me so. Your happiness is at stake, and it shall be preserved at all hazards."
"How can you preserve it better than I can?" Adela demanded.
Lance delayed his answer, inwardly trembling. It may be that we ought not to inquire into the wild and erratic impulses that assailed him at that instant; but, amid their dizzying influence, he held fast to the ideal of honesty on all sides.
"Very likely I can't," he replied, calmly. "But I wish to say that, if anything should go wrong, if any trouble should come to you, I may be counted on as your friend—no matter who opposes."
Adela melted at once into frank dependence. "Oh, Mr. Lance," she said, "I have sorrows, like other people, and I don't know what they will bring at last; so if youwillhelp me when I need help, I shall be glad! But please don't think about me now; only let me go—let me go!"
And with this sorry climax the interview ended, Lance retiring with an inexplicable sense of defeated endeavor. In some way, which he was not able to analyze as yet, his dream had been exploded. The unravelling of the mystery of Gertrude Wylde had been to him a romance of the most fascinating kind; but now that the romance had culminated, no one seemed to know what to do with it. Apparently he had followed a will-o'-the-wisp, when he expected any good to attend his success in ferreting out Adela's identity; for it had put him at odds with Jessie, and it brought no pleasure to Adela herself.
With heavy hearts both Lance and Sylv accomplished their journey to Beaufort late that afternoon; and on the way Lance explained to his companion the new light in which Adela must be regarded.
Sylv, however, said little, and appeared anxious to reach home, where he could consult with Dennie.
He found his brother busily engaged in completing a ditch across the neck of the headland, which he had finally, in deference to the wishes of Aunty Losh, undertaken to dig, to the end that her live-stock might be kept from straying over to the mainland. "I am fearsome o' the tides," said Dennie, as he had said long ago; "but aunty wants this hyar for to be done, and so I am doin' on it."
The docile, plodding industry of his brother smote upon Sylv with a singular reproach. He could not throw off the conviction that he himself had been essentially idle in his devotion to book-learning, while Dennie had remained so faithful to the dull duties at home.
"Dennie," he said, "I got some good news for you."
"Ye mean that ar?" queried Dennie, halting in his toil, with his shovel in the loose ground. "I ain't had no good news for a long sight, Sylv. What mout it be?"
"Deely's coming back to you."
Dennie stood stock still and wiped the sweat from his brow. Then he touched his grimy knuckles to his eyelids; but, without betraying emotion in any other way, except by the softening of his voice, he said: "I'm glad on't, Sylv. Ar' she a-comin' back because she want to?"
"Yes; oh yes! There couldn't be any other reason, could there, Dennie?"
"Well, I warn't right sure," said Dennie. "No; I reckon they aren't no other reason." Seizing the shovel, he made a few more plunges with it into the soil. "Well, I'm right glad on't, Sylv. When ar' she comin'?"
"Now, I'll tell you how it is," Sylv returned, assuming an expository manner. "Deely thinks you've been a right good boy, and she allows she was impatient with you. But, then, you were impatient too. She's made up her mind to let go the rest of her school term, and she's waiting for you now up at the city. All you've got to do is to go there and get her."
Dennie abandoned his work for the moment, and gazed at his brother affectionately. "Thank ye kindly, Sylv. Ye been a good brother to me. Oh, it don't 'pear true! I don't make out how it's so; but I waited and sarved kind o'patient, Sylv, and all to once it comes out squar'. Deely's been fair to me, old man, and so ha' you been. Wall, it's more'n I desarve."
With the guilty knowledge of a hidden love for Adela in his heart, Sylv would rather have faced the threatening muzzle of his brother's gun, as it had once been pointed at him, than to have stood up before the glance of trust and affection which Dennie now directed toward him. But, thank Heaven, his conscience was clean. He had not betrayed the trust. He had preserved his honor, and had left Adela free.
"Don't think about what you deserve," he said, "but just you go and do what she expects you to. You go up there and fetch her back."
"Did she ask ye to tell me that, Sylv?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll do it! But I ar' got to dig this hyar ditch first off, don't you see I have? 'Cause I tole aunty I would, and she'd be a heap sight put out if I didn't. But ye'll go up to the city with me, won't ye, Sylv? I'd feel lonesome and quar' ef ye didn't."
"I'm right sorry, Dennie; but I can't. I've got to do some work for Mr. Lance, and I ought not to go back."
However, when Dennie was ready to take his departure Sylv came to him with a sealed letter. "I can't go with you, Dennie," he repeated; "but there's a few words I wanted to say to Deely, and you might as well carry them, I thought."
Dennie conscientiously dumped the missive into his hat; and, with a last joyous whisk of his red beard, took leave of his brother.
His impatience to see Adela caused him to spurn the faithful dug-out as a means of travel, and he went by rail.
In the long months of separation from his sweetheart he had succeeded in carrying out a great self-improvement. The hope of making himself worthy to recover her was the mainstay of his gallant persistence in this work, and it had wrought a wonderful effect. He was still the same Dennie—his temperament could not be remodelled—but from being irascible, hot-headed, untrustworthy, he had come to exercise a self-control that made him seem uncommonly gentle. What he gained in that direction he had to hold by untiring vigilance and firm will; but a succession of victories convinced him that now, when the reward was held out to him, he could prove his fitness to receive it.
A driving rain poured down upon North Carolina as he left the coast. The sea showed its white teeth at Hatteras and all along the sandy spits and islands that fringe that shore. Every one said that still uglier weather was likely to come soon. But to Dennie the drenching showers and the hurly-burly of the winds only enhanced the gladness in his heart. He basked in the delicious glow of cosiness which children feel when snugly housed from pelting storms that they can watch at ease. The slow-paced cars seemed to him to glide ahead with wonderful swiftness—his own happy anticipation lent speed to the wheels—and the humming rails echoed and rang again with one continual song of hope, hope, hope.
How many fond, encouraging things he would say to Adela! How bright he would make the prospect for her! He would show her, beyond question, that she need never undergo any trials or troubles which he could prevent.
It was not so easy to do all this, at first, as he had imagined it would be. On meeting, they were both rather quiet. Dennie took her hand bashfully: he discovered all at once that he was in the presence of a superior being. The muscles of his right arm, also, appeared to succumb to a peculiar disorder, and would not act when he wanted to throw that arm around her waist. Good Lord! was he afraid? Had he been afraid to clasp her in his arm a year before? But gradually this paralytic attack wore itself out: he sat down beside her, and presently his right hand was visible to his own eyes, resting easily at a point on the right side of her belt.
"I'm glad to be with ye again, Deely," he said, carefully eliminating as much of the gruffness as he could from his strong out-of-doors voice.
But the hearty gruffness that remained was, somehow, very agreeable to Adela. "Dear old Dennie," she said, in a gentle, musing way, as if she were speaking of him to some third person.
"And ye're glad, too, be ye, Deely?" he asked, gazing at her indulgently, but with some vestiges of anxious doubt.
"Yes, Dennie, I'm glad to be with you; you're so good now. And I like to see you happy."
"That's a puss," said the big fellow, but instantly felt astonishment at his own familiarity. Finding, too, that he was instinctively patting her with his hand, he promptly stopped, because it struck him that his hand was too rough, and he might hurt or crush her. He drew it softly away to a more normal position. "Why, they tell me," he resumed, "that ye're a great lady now—a sort o' princess, or su'thin' that way, I didn't know for sure ye'd want to see me or have me hangin' round ye no more."
And then he laughed at the deceptiveness and the wild humor of his own speech.
"Oh, Dennie," she implored, "don't talk about that! What difference does it make?"
"Ye needn't bat yer eyes," he replied. "I ain't 'shamed on it, if ye ain't. Why Sylv, he said how ye war just as good as Miss Jessie, 'cause ye war born away back out'n the same family; leastways, some one else did the bornin' for ye, them ar times. But I—well,Iallays thought ye war a heap sight better'n Miss Jessie or any one else."
"I know that, Dennie. You always loved me true. Oh, it was wrong for me to come away from you so!"
Adela leaned her head upon him, and began to sob slightly. This proceeding was to totally unlooked for, that Dennie was amazed.
"Thar, thar," he said, "ye'd oughtn't for to cry when I come back to ye. No; ye had the right on't, Deely. I warn't fit, then, and I wouldn't ha' been a fip better ef ye hadn't ha' left me be. It ar' all right, I tell ye. But fust, when I saw ye just now, thinks I, ye've changed so, and ye look so sort o' ironed up all careful, ye won't care nothin' for a old rough boy like Dennie no more. But if ye're goin' to cry, Deely, why, I want for to stop ye; and I do think it war all right, your leavin' me."
"Oh no, no," she reaffirmed, still weeping. "I did you a great wrong, Dennie!"
Dennie's face became apprehensive for a moment; but that look quickly dissolved, and he permitted himself a subdued laugh. "It are enough to make a man laugh," he said, in excuse, "to think o' my forgivin' ye; but if ye feel ye done wrong, why, I'll say I forgive ye, Deely. I do forgive ye, right free."
She had made the only confession she could. Indeed, what was there to reveal, except that in her long companionship with Sylv she had learned to love him, before she comprehended what was happening, and that she had honestly, at a fearful cost, stifled that love so far as might be, in order to remain true to the man she had promised to wed? But to tell this would in itself be to dishonor her vow.
She looked up to Dennie with streaming eyes, and her hand sought his. "Thank you, thank you!" she murmured. "I have suffered a great deal here, Dennie—away from you. I know you have suffered too. But you are generous and kind; and now I hope we can forget all the pain."
Dennie, in listening to her, was strongly impressed with the feeling that he was hearing something read from a book, so sharp was the contrast between her utterance and his. But the contents of the supposititious book were very soothing and acceptable. He turned quickly to her, and for the first time since his arrival they embraced each other with thorough self-forgetfulness.
"But, Deely," he said, "I ain't like ye ar'. I ain't got l'arnin' the way ye have now. Don't ye reckon that ar'll disapp'int ye?"
"No; not a bit," she answered, warmly; "you'll be kind and good to me, Dennie, and I will be a good wife to you. All I want is for you to take me away from here. Take me home!"
There was an almost desperate energy in her voice. The truth was, Dennie's presence acted upon her as a restorative, and awakened many memories of the simple and happier time when they had played together and grown up together and carried on their courtship by the shore. Despite her love for Sylv—or perhaps in consequence of it—she threw herself upon Dennie's protection with an eagerness she would not have believed possible until she met him face to face. His big figure, his glowing cheeks, his heavy hands and rough accent—all brought to her a whiff of the salt air in which she had been born and bred. Her secret misery was dulled by his trusting companionship; she was lulled into reveries of some existence of comparative peace, in which she would be able to fulfil her ideal of duty and find her recompense in so doing.
"Take ye home, dear girl! Why, that's what I'm wantin' to do," he rejoined, tenderly. And, fired by the thought, he went on to tell her where they would make the home; how Sylv and he were going to take part in Lance's wide-reaching plans; how he would perhaps have something to do with the paper-mill or the market gardens that were to replace the swamp; and how happy she and he could be.
Adela entered eagerly into all these glowing particulars. A new life opened before her, which she believed would be beautified with all sorts of unexpected happiness; and she was filled with thanksgiving because she had clung resolutely to her plighted troth.
"We'll go to-morrow!" cried Dennie, with enthusiasm. "D'ye think ye can make out to be ready, Deely?"
"I could be ready to-day," she replied, "if there's a train."
Dennie, wonderful to relate, had provided himself with a time-table, though the "summer arrangement" of the railroad to Beaufort was not complicated. He resorted to his hat to find it. But as he plucked the printed slip from its place in the inner band of the hat his eye lighted on Sylv's letter. Until that moment he had entirely forgotten that he was a usurper of the postal function.
"Dog-gone it!" he exclaimed, "I come mighty near not givin' you this. It's from Sylv."
Adela stripped away tho yellow envelope with startled haste; and on a poor sheet of blue-ruled note-paper she read these words:
"Dear Deely:I did not mean to write anything, but the feeling comes over me that I ought to say good-by to you and Dennie. I have decided that my life here has been a failure, and I am going away. I shall not come back. Mr. Lance thinks I have gone to do something for him, but it is no use to look for me, because no one can find me."I love you and Dennie, and want you to be happy together. Remember that, and do not mourn over me any more than if I had died. You know we cannot help dying. If I could do any good by staying I would; but I am certain it is better for me to go."Tell Dennie I trust him to make you happy. I believe in him and love him. Good-by.Sylv."
"Dear Deely:I did not mean to write anything, but the feeling comes over me that I ought to say good-by to you and Dennie. I have decided that my life here has been a failure, and I am going away. I shall not come back. Mr. Lance thinks I have gone to do something for him, but it is no use to look for me, because no one can find me.
"I love you and Dennie, and want you to be happy together. Remember that, and do not mourn over me any more than if I had died. You know we cannot help dying. If I could do any good by staying I would; but I am certain it is better for me to go.
"Tell Dennie I trust him to make you happy. I believe in him and love him. Good-by.Sylv."
Dennie awaited the result of her reading in dumb expectancy, and saw the look of horror in her face, but could not account for it.
Adela shrieked aloud. "Oh, he is dead!" she cried. "He meant to kill himself! Help, Dennie, help! What are we to do?"
She stretched out her hand, with the letter in it; but Dennie only shook his head, in helpless bewilderment.
"I can't read it," he said, piteously. "I don't know enough, Deely. That ar writin'—Deely, what ails ye? What's he said there?"
The mistress of the academy came running in, alarmed by the girl's outcry.
"Sylv is going to kill himself," Adela repeated. "He says he's going away; but I know—oh, I know what he means! See, Dennie; that's what he says." And again she held the letter toward him, distractedly. "He says good-by to you and me. Can we go to-day? Is there any train?"
Dennie offered the mistress his time-table, which to him was merely an illegible curiosity—a memento of his unprecedented journey.
Without looking at it, however, she drew out her watch with a sharp tug at the silken guard that held it. "Yes, you have time," she announced, "if you hurry. I'll bring your things, Miss Reefe."
She disappeared.
"Tell me 'bout it, Deely," said Dennie, fumbling hopelessly with the letter, which he had now taken into his sunburned hands.
Adela set foot upon her agitation, and rapidly read the letter over to him.
Dennie appeared to be stunned. "Suicide?" he said. "What for? Hev you got any right for to think that ar?" His tone was indignant. "What call ar' he got to kill hisself? Sylv—our Sylv, I tell ye. My brother!"
"Because he hadn't anything left to live for! He was miserable," Adela answered, with vengeful emphasis. "It is Mr. Lance did it—sending me here. No!Idid it, because I would not tell him what I felt. I wanted to be true to you."
The truth burst upon Dennie like a flood, and his fierce temper rose to meet it. For an instant a blinding light flashed dazzingly by across everything that surrounded him; he grew giddy, and Adela had no more important existence in his eyes than the table and the chairs around him, or the lifeless walls of the room. His single desire was, in his rage, to destroy something, to create havoc and ruin, answering to the ruin of his own hopes. But the next instant he felt as if he were among the pines, with his gun aimed at Sylv; and the thought that Sylv at this very instant might be lying dead somewhere brought a ghastly picture before his eyes. The whirl of maddening light passed away, and he stood humiliated, mournful, calm, motionless.
"Then it's true at last!" he said, hoarsely. "You loved that man—my brother—and he loved you."
For a moment Adela could not speak. Her lips moved, without sound. At last she answered: "Yes. But I never told him, and he said nothing to me. 'Twas only after we came here."
Dennie replied in a voice that made her think of the muffled breaking of the waves on the distant coast. "I was fearsome of it, Deely, but I swore I wouldn't think on't. It ar' best I know it now. We'll go and look for—for Sylv. If he ar' alive, I'll bring you to him."
Without notice Hedson had appeared on the scene; he was hospitably received by Colonel Floyd, and asked Lance to show him over the ground in which the as yet unborn syndicate was expected to invest.
Accompanied by Sylv they were occupied in a general survey of the swamp, from the outside, at the time when Dennie was talking with Adela in Newbern. "Yes, yes; fine country for a cemetery," said the hale but sceptical Hedson. "To come down to bed-rock on this thing," he added, turning to Lance, "the expense of paring off the natural growth and filling in here would be enormous, to say nothing of what the lawyers call 'supplementary proceedings.' You know what that means, don't you, Mr. De Vine?" Here he included Sylv in the favored list of those for whom his remarks were intended.
The upshot of the exploratory drive was that Hedson gave a semi-adverse judgment; notwithstanding which he began to consult with himself inaudibly as to the best mode of going to work to buy some of the waste land in question on his private account.
Sylv showed an unmistakable eagerness to begin his task of investigating the interior of the swamp, and before he parted from Lance for the day he took him aside and told him that he should be in the swamp by daylight of the next morning.
Hedson and the colonel found plenty to talk about that evening, and Lance was left alone with Jessie.
The conversation that passed between these two was somewhat ruffled. Jessie found fault with her lover because he had gone to Newbern against her will, and Lance assured her that his eccentric interest in Adela Reefe was now appeased: he had done all that he wished to, in disclosing to her the probable relationship with the Floyds, and would henceforth leave her affairs, for the most part, alone. But Jessie was not content with that declaration.
"If she comes back here to live, as you say she is about to do," she asked, "what do you expect?"
"Simply that we shall receive her as one of us," said Lance. "I have befriended her and the De Vine boys, and I intend to keep on. They are inevitably a part of my system and my plans now."
"Then you are going to overturn everything," Jessie asserted.
In short, silly though it was, they quarrelled more seriously than they had done hitherto.
Jessie, there is reason to believe, was very unhappy in consequence, and passed a wretched night. And Lance scarcely slept a wink. He lay restless on his bed, turning and tossing, until it seemed to him that he veered this way or that with the varying gusts of the tempestuous wind that hourly grew more turbulent, until Fairleigh Manor shook in its angry clutch.
"How the wind roars!" he growled aloud, starting from a half doze; and after vainly waiting a while longer for repose he got up, dressed himself, and went out.
The earliest gray of daybreak was visible in the eastern sky, but the atmosphere was so surcharged with storm that he fancied he could hear the seething of the angry ocean in the blasts that whirled around him, though he was not within ten miles of the open sea.
An hour after he had left the manor a worn-out wagon from Beaufort drew up in front of the door, and Dennie alighted. Dennie raised such a clamor at the door that at last the inmates began to arouse themselves. Jessie was the first to respond to the summons. She gathered hastily from Dennie the object of his untimely call, and learned that Adela was with him in the wagon. They were looking for Sylv; had been detained at Beaufort, and were only just arrived; so they had come at once to the manor to ask Lance if he knew anything of Sylv's whereabouts, since Lance had been mentioned in the letter of farewell. But, a servant being sent to Lance's room, it was discovered that he was not at home; and Dennie forthwith started to drive to the shore, hoping that he might get some clew from Aunty Losh.
Imagine Jessie's wonder and anxiety when she found that Lance had disappeared! Her conscience had already stung her for the absurdity of her quarrel with him; but now that he was out of reach, and that Dennie had brought to her the apprehension of something tragic impending over Sylvester, her excitement rose to fever-height. Daylight broadened while she sat up, nervous and speculating, amid the noises of the disturbed household; and the wind-storm increased in violence every moment, keeping pace with her terror and her perplexity. Filled with forebodings, and finding it impossible to remain inactive, she completed her toilet, had one of the stable-hands called, and, leaving word for her father that she had gone to the headland in quest of Lance, she started to drive through the plantations.
Hunting Quarters being the nearer point, Dennie dropped the reins when the jaded team which he drove brought him to a fork in the roadway, and told Adela to drive to her father's house. He himself set out on a full run for Aunty Losh's, and never paused until he reached the cabin-door.
Aunty Losh reported that Sylv had risen before dawn and gone toward Elbow-Crook Swamp, saying that he had something to do there for Mr. Lance.
The storm raged more furiously than ever. The ocean could be heard thundering at the outer bulwarks of the coast irresistibly. The great billows were actually at that moment surging far beyond their wonted limits and shaking the very roots of the low hills out by Hatteras, though Dennie could not see them there. He could guess the tumult that was in progress at Ocracoke and lower; the air was full of mist and flying spray; the sea was literally pulling down the outer sand-heaps, eating into them, doing its best to tear open a new inlet; and the waters of the Sound were furrowed, foaming, and uncontrollable. Yet Dennie could not delay. He began at once to retrace his course, heading for the swamp, for he had several miles to go. It was only for an instant, as he crossed the planks over the ditch he had so recently made, that he observed how the water from the Sound was boiling through the artificial channel.
He went on in headlong haste.
Before he had been twenty minutes out of sight Jessie drove up to within a few rods of the ditch, and sped across the intervening space. Her coachman warned her not to go thither. "You'll be blown away, missy," he cried, despairingly. "Dis yer am a hurricane, and de hosses can't stan' it much longer."
But, if she heard him, she paid no attention. In a few moments she had crossed the narrow planks, which, bedded though they were in the earth, trembled at the assaults of the wind. She had no more than vanished among the trees around the cabin when the tide, rushing in renewed volumes through the ditch, swept away the frail bridge as if it had been straw. The banks began to crumble; and the coachman, barely able to guide his horses, whipped up and drove away as well as he could, in search of aid.
Dennie got over the ground with marvellous rapidity, taking the shortest line for the swamp. The wind was blowing inland, and bore him along with it; so, when he had gone two thirds of the way, it seemed to him that but a few minutes had elapsed. He was on the regular road, now; but it was providential, nevertheless, that he should encounter in that spot another man. He hailed him loudly, amid the howling of the wind; and the man, turning round, proved to be Lance! He, too, was on his way to the swamp. Going forth aimlessly, he had made up his mind to join Sylv, if he could find him, in the proposed expedition. Alarmed by the prodigious force of the tempest, however, he would have turned back and endeavored to regain the manor, if he had not met Dennie.
A few hasty words gave him knowledge of the threatened catastrophe; and the two men joined forces in the forlorn attempt to find Sylv and prevent his self-destruction.
Dennie knew where a boat could be had to launch upon the devious river that ran through the swamp; and, fortunately, it turned out that Sylv had not taken this boat for himself.
Together they entered the gloomy jungle. They not only plunged into the desperate undertaking of trying to save the life of another man, who had resorted to this convenient cover with the evident purpose of never emerging thence, but they also engaged in a struggle which, for themselves, was very like a life-and-death matter.
For some time they could not use their boat. They were obliged to drag it through a tangled mass of roots and vines and treacherous brake, until they could reach the stream. The exertion they made was almost super-human, and would have been impossible to them except under the terrible incentive that drew them on. Only when they were afloat, and paddling warily along the dubious and unfamiliar current, did they understand how their labor had sapped their strength. And only then, also, did they perceive that they had passed from a world of uproar and elemental upheaving into a realm as secluded and quiet as a tomb.
The mighty winds, it is true, rumbled through the tops of the trees under which they were buried; but the dense mass of boughs and springing verdure that walled in the secret places of the swamp, as with a hundred separate walls, would not permit that wild commotion of the outer air to reach them. Birds had fled hither from the hurricane, and even dared to chirp in the lonely and forsaken thickets of this uncouth wilderness. Day was spreading above the thick canopy of boughs, and was pouring its light all round the vast area of the swamp at its edges; but here, within, there reigned a perpetual and awful twilight. The slow, brown stream ran on ahead, turning here and there, opening into blind creeks, sprawling through the dusk like some great snaky thing with a hundred sinuous arms and feelers; but it was rather by instinct and touch than by any other means that the two men in the canoe traced the main body of the slimy current. No landmarks were to be counted on there: the points of the compass were obliterated.
The swamp was the home of oblivion. They moved through it as through a place set apart for those who are condemned to a death in life.
From time to time they shouted aloud. Having no weapons with them, they could make no other signal. They called to Sylv, with a hope that he might answer to them from the next bend in the stream, or from some adjoining depth of bough and bramble. Yet always the same dead silence swallowed up the sound of their voices, and no human response came back. The raw air, the shade, the moisture of the oozing current, gradually invaded them with a chill that seemed to run through their very bones; but it was with a more deadly chill that they gazed into one another's eyes, and thought, without saying it, that perhaps they were even then pushing their way over the liquid grave in which Sylv might have sought relief.
How long they urged that ghostly chase it would not be easy to say: they could form no judgment of the time. But at last Dennie caught sight of what appeared to be a ruddy flame on a low island in the muddy flood, some distance in advance. Neither of the paddlers was quite positive that it was a real flame, but they put new vigor into their strokes, and hallooed again. Once more, no answer.
Still, the flame grew more distinct. The canoe swept rapidly forward and rubbed against the roots and sediment of the tiny island. No other boat was moored there, but the fire flickered and spurted up more vividly. Beside it they beheld Sylv, haggard, inert, and seemingly unconscious of their approach.
"Sylv! Sylv!" cried Dennie.
"What are you doing here?" Lance demanded.
Sylv shrank back, then started to his feet; the flame-light—looking so garish in that gloomy place—thrown upward on to his wan checks in such wise as to make them seem more hollow than they were in fact.
"I came here to die," he answered, without emotion. "Why did you follow me? It would have been over before long."
They heard the booming of the storm-wind in the trees overhead, like the groan of some remote unknown multitude of sufferers; and it chimed in well with the lonely reverberation of his voice.
"It is over now!" Lance exclaimed. "Don't you see that we won't let you die? It was mad of you to think of such a thing, Sylv!"
Dennie drew close to his brother swiftly, and put his arm around him, as though to guard him from an unseen enemy.
"Sylv," he said, "it ar' all fixed and done. Deely loves ye—she have told me—and I see that I ain't the one for her. I'm clean done with all that ar foolishness, Sylv, and I told her she'd got to marry ye, anyhow. Steady away now, Sylv. D'ye listen to me?"
The burly, red-bearded brother slid his hands down the arms of the slender, dark-haired one, and held him as if he feared that he might still break away and escape.
Lance, looking on, thought he had never seen anything more tender, more brave and manly, than Dennie's expression and attitude. He had never, he thought, heard finer sweetness in a man's voice than came from Dennie's lips.
Sylv broke down. "Dennie, boy," he cried; and then paused, choking. "Dear old Dennie!" (His brother winced at that unconscious repetition of Adela's phrase.) "I never thought this would come! I was true when I said I did not love her. I couldn't know what it would be like, then. But, you see, I tried to get out of the way. Oh, why didn't you let me die here!"
The morbid mood which had impelled him to the resource of slow suicide, by starvation in the swamp, could not at once be dispelled; but by dint of soothing words and of reminders that they must lose no time in getting back to the outer world, the two allies prevailed over Sylv's melancholy.
"Where's your boat?" asked Lance.
"I set it adrift," was the answer.
A fresh peril was thus intruded upon them; for the canoe would hold three persons only with the greatest precautions.
"You uns go, and then one can come back for me," Dennie suggested.
But Lance would not risk leaving him alone. It was decided, therefore, that they should all embark and make their way to safety, if possible. The hazard and suspense of the situation, however, roused Sylv up thoroughly. All his finer qualities reasserted themselves, and he became the guiding spirit in the endeavor of the party to extricate itself. He whom the others had come to recall to life was now eager to lead them out of the dilemma in which they had placed themselves on his account. But in the anxiety of the moment he forgot one thing. The flame which he had kindled, like a torch in the gloomy vaults of death, was left burning; and they had paddled some distance before they remembered their neglect.
Meanwhile the lonely beacon, unwatched, had shot out an experimental tongue to try sundry dry vine-stems hard by. The stems responded with a brisk crackle. The flames scaled the side of a tree almost instantly, and ran along the boughs. Thence they transferred themselves with ease to another tree. Thus, in a few minutes, the blaze spread from the island into the rest of the dense wood, and became a conflagration.
The smoke blew lazily toward the occupants of the canoe; then a lurid glow shone along the murky water. They saw their danger, and paddled with might and main; but the danger of upsetting the overloaded craft handicapped them and retarded their progress.
Soon the glow came nearer and burst into actual fire. The whole swamp seemed to be roofed with writhing flame. The heat was frightful: birds flew away madly through the labyrinth; the shadowy shapes of wild creatures scurried through the tangle, and scared serpents slipped out from their lairs, trailing across the sluggish stream. All the while the fire pursued the three human fugitives with what seemed a vindictive intelligence: the long draperies of gray moss caught the sparks, flashing them on in vivid festoons, and wrapping the forest in a magnificent combustion.
Blinded, stifled, and dizzy, the canoeists were at last obliged to abandon their narrow bark and push their way through the fearful maze on shore. Luckily, however, when they were driven to this extreme they had come nearly to the edge of the wilderness.
Each struggling for himself, Lance and Sylv suddenly achieved safety: they set foot upon the solid ground, and felt the fierce wind from the sea. But at that juncture Dennie, who was behind them, stumbled, and was caught in the mire. The hissing mass of flame advanced upon him, and Sylv, seeing his danger, turned to help him.
Lance tried to hold Sylv back. He fought with him, in his desire to prevent what he thought a certain sacrifice of two lives instead of one. But Sylv, nerved by an ecstatic force, sprang away from him and reached his brother's side. How it was done neither Lance nor Sylv could say afterward; but the attempt succeeded, and Sylv dragged Dennie out of danger, though not unscathed. The intense heat had blistered their faces and hands even in the few moments that it had to work upon them; and Dennie, hurt by the fall of a heavy branch which had struck his leg, lay in the road, unable to rise.