CHAPTER XXVIII
They had been in the Monnlungs half an hour. Margaret acted as pilot; half kneeling, half sitting at the bow, one hand on the canoe's edge, her face turned forward, she gave her directions slowly, all her powers concentrated upon recalling correctly and keeping unmixed from present impressions her memory of the channel.
The present impressions were indeed so strange, that a strong exertion of will was necessary to prevent the mind from becoming fascinated by them, from forgetting in this series of magic pictures the different aspect of these same vistas by day. Even by day the vistas were alluring. By night, lighted up by the flare of the approaching torches, at first vaguely, then brilliantly, then vanishing into darkness again behind, they became unearthly, exceeding in contrasts of color – reds, yellows, and green, all of them edged sharply with the profoundest gloom – the most striking effects of the painters who have devoted their lives to reproducing light and shade.
Lanse had explored a part of the Monnlungs. He had not explored it all, no human eye had as yet beheld some of its mazes; but the part he had explored he knew well, he had even made a map of it. Margaret had seen this map; she felt sure, too, that she should know the channels he called the Lanes. Her idea, upon entering, had been to follow the main stream to the first of these lanes, there turn off and explore the lane to its end; then, returning to the main channel, to go on to the second lane; and so on through Lanse's part of the swamp. They had now explored two of the lanes, and were entering a third.
She had taken off her hat, and thrown it down upon the cloak beside her. "It's so oppressively warm in here," she said.
It was not oppressively warm – not warmer than a June night at the North. But the air was perfectly still, and so sweet that it was enervating.
The forest grew denser along this third lane as they advanced. The trees stood nearer together, and silver moss now began to hang down in long, filmy veils, thicker and thicker, from all the branches. Mixed with the moss, vines showed themselves in strange convolutions, they went up out of sight; in girth they were as large as small trees; they appeared to have not a leaf, but to be dry, naked, chocolate-brown growths, twisting themselves about hither and thither for their own entertainment.
This was the appearance below. But above, there was another story to tell; for here were interminable flat beds of broad green leaves, spread out over the outside of the roof of foliage – leaves that belonged to these same naked coiling growths below; the vines had found themselves obliged to climb to the very top in order to get a ray of sunshine for their greenery.
For there was no sky for anybody in the Monnlungs; the deep solid roof of interlocked branches stretched miles long, miles wide, like a close tight cover, over the entire place. The general light of day came filtering through, dyed with much green, quenched into blackness at the ends of the vistas; but actual sunbeams never came, never gleamed, year in year out, across the clear darkness of the broad water floor.
The water on this floor was always pellucid; whether it was the deep current of the main channel, or the shallower tide that stood motionless over all the rest of the expanse, no where was there the least appearance of mud; the lake and the streams, red-brown in hue, were as clear as so much fine wine; the tree trunks rose cleanly from this transparent tide, their huge roots could be seen coiling on the bottom much as the great vines coiled in the air above. These gray-white bald cypresses had a monumental aspect, like the columns of a Gothic cathedral, as they rose, erect and branchless, disappearing above in the mist of the moss. The moss presently began to take on an additional witchery by becoming decked with flowers; up to a certain height these flowers had their roots in the earth; but above these were other blossoms – air-plants, some vividly tinted, flaring, and gaping, others so small and so flat on the moss that they were like the embroidered flowers on lace, only they were done in colors.
"I detest this moss," said Margaret, as it grew thicker and thicker, so that there was nothing to be seen but the silver webs; "I feel strangled in it, – suffocated."
"Oh, but it's beautiful," said Winthrop. "Don't you see the colors it takes on? Gray, then silver, then almost pink as we pass; then gray and ghostly again."
For all answer she called her husband's name. She had called it in this way at intervals ever since they entered the swamp.
"The light we carry penetrates much farther than your voice," Winthrop remarked.
"I want him to know who it is."
"Oh, he'll know – such a devoted wife! Who else could it be?"
After a while the lane made a bend, and led them away from the moss; the canoe, turning to the right, left behind it the veiled forest, white and motionless. Margaret drew a long breath, she shook herself slightly, like a person who has emerged.
"You have on your jewels again," he said, as the movement caused the torch-light to draw a gleam from something in her hair.
She put up her hand as if she had forgotten what was there. "Jewels? Only a gold arrow." She adjusted it mechanically.
"Jewels enough on your hands, then. You didn't honor us with a sight of them – while you were at East Angels, I mean."
"I don't care for them; I put them on this morning before I started, because Lanse likes them."
"So do I. Unwillingly, you also please me; of course I never dreamed that I should have so much time to admire them – parading by torch-light in this way through a great morass."
She did not answer.
"They bring you out, you know, in spite of yourself – drag you out, if you like better; they show what you might be, if you would ever – let yourself go."
"Let myself go? You use strange expressions."
"A man isn't responsible for what he says in here."
"You say that a second time! You know there was no other way; the only hope of getting Lanse home before the storm was to start at once."
"The storm – to be sure. I don't believe it ever storms in here."
She turned towards him. "You know I had to come."
"I know you thought so; you thought we should find Lanse sitting encamped on two cypress knees, with the wreck of his canoe for a seat. We should dawn upon him like comets. And he would say, 'How long you've been! It's precious damp in here, you know!'"
She turned impatiently towards the channel again.
"Don't demand too much, Margaret," he went on. "Jesting's safe, at any rate. Sympathy I haven't got – sympathy for this expedition of yours into this jungle at this time of night."
She had now recovered her composure. "So long as you paddle the boat, sympathy isn't necessary."
"Oh, I'll paddle! But I shall have to paddle forever, we shall never get out. We've come to an antediluvian forest – don't you see? a survival. But we sha'n't survive. They'll write our biographies; I was wondering the other day if there was any other kind of literature so completely composed of falsehoods, owing to half being kept back, as biographies; I decided that there was one other – autobiographies."
On both sides of them now the trees were, in girth, enormous; the red light, gleaming out fitfully, did not seem to belong to them or to their torches, but to be an independent glow, coming from no one knew where.
"If we had the grace to have any imagination left in this bicycle century of ours," remarked Winthrop, "we should certainly be expecting to see some mammoth water creature, fifty feet long, lifting a flabby head here. For my own part, I am afraid my imagination, never very brilliant, is defunct; the most I can do is to think of the thousands of snakes there must be, squirming about under all this water, – not prehistoric at all, nor mammoths, but just nice natural every-day little moccasins, say about seven feet long."
Margaret shuddered.
He stopped his banter, his voice changed. "Do let me take you home," he urged. "You're tired out; give this thing up."
"I am not tired."
"You have been tired to the verge of death for months!"
"You know nothing about that," she said, coldly.
"Yes, I do. I have seen your face, and I know its expressions now; I didn't at first, but now I do. There's no use in your trying to deceive me Margaret, I know what your life is; remember, Lanse told me everything."
"That was long ago."
"What do you mean?" He leaned forward and grasped her arm as though he would make her turn.
For a moment she did not reply. Then, "A great deal may have happened since then," she said.
"I don't believe you!" He dropped her arm. "You say that to stop me, keep me back; you are afraid of me!" He took up his paddle again.
"Yes, I am afraid." Then, putting a little note of contempt into her voice: "And wasn't I right to be afraid?" she added. She drew the arm he had touched close to her waist, and held it there.
"No!" answered Winthrop, loudly and angrily; "you were completely wrong." He sent the canoe forward with rapid strokes.
They went to the end of the lane, then returned to the main channel, still in silence. But here it became necessary again for Margaret to give directions.
"Go as far as that pool of knees," she began; "then turn to the right."
"You are determined to keep on?"
"I must; that is, I must if you will take me."
He sat without moving.
"If anything should happen to Lanse that I might have prevented by keeping on now, how could I ever – "
"Oh, keep on, keep on; bring him safely home and take every care of him – he has done so much to deserve these efforts on your part!"
They went on.
And now the stream was bringing them towards the place Margaret had thought of upon entering – a bower in the heart of the Monnlungs, or rather a long defile like a chink between two high cliffs, the cliffs being a dense mass of flowering shrubs.
Winthrop made no comment as they entered this blossoming pass, Margaret did not speak. The air was loaded with sweetness; she put her hands on the edge of the canoe to steady herself. Then she looked up as if in search of fresher air, or to see how high the flowers ascended. But there was no fresher air, and the flowers went up out of sight.
The defile grew narrower, the atmosphere became so heavy that they could taste the perfume in their mouths. After another five minutes Margaret drew a long breath – she had apparently been trying to breathe as little as possible. "I don't think I can – I am afraid – " She swayed, then sank softly down; she had fainted.
He caught her in his arms, and laid her on the canoe's bottom, her head on the cloak. He looked at the water, but the thought of the dark tide's touching that fair face was repugnant to him. He bent down and spoke to her, and smoothed her hair. But that was advancing nothing, and he began to chafe her hands.
Then suddenly he rose, and, taking the paddle, sent the canoe flying along between the high bushes. The air was visibly thick in the red light of the torches, a miasma of scent. A branch of small blossoms with the perfume of heliotrope softly brushed against his cheek, he struck it aside with unnecessary violence. Exerting all his strength, he at last got the canoe free from the beautiful baleful place.
When Margaret opened her eyes they were outside; she was lying peacefully on the cloak, and he was still paddling vehemently.
"I am ashamed," she said, as she raised herself. "I suppose I fainted? Perfumes have a great effect upon me always. I know that place well, I thought of it before we entered the swamp; I thought it would make me dizzy, but I had no idea that it would make me faint away. It has never done so before, the scents must be stronger at night."
She still seemed weak; she put her hand to her head. Then a thought came to her, she sat up and looked about, scanning the trees anxiously. "I hope you haven't gone wrong? How far are we from the narrow place – the place where I fainted?"
"I don't know how far. But we haven't been out of it more than five or six minutes, and this is certainly the channel."
"Nothing is 'certainly' in the Monnlungs! And five minutes is quite enough time to get lost in. I don't recognize anything here – we ought to be in sight of a tree that has a profile, like a face."
"Perhaps you wouldn't know it at night."
"It's unmistakable. No, I am sure we are wrong. Please go back – go back at once to the narrow place."
"Where is 'back?'" murmured Winthrop to himself, after he had surveyed the water behind him.
And the question was a necessary one. What he had thought was "certainly the channel" seemed to exist only in front; there was no channel behind, there were only broad tree-filled water spaces, vague and dark. They could see nothing of the thicker foliage of the "narrow place."
Margaret clasped her hands. "We're lost!"
"No, we're not lost; at least we were not seven minutes ago. It won't take long to go over all the water that is seven minutes from here." He took out one of the torches and inserted it among the roots of a cypress, so that it could hold itself upright. "That's our guide; we can always come back to that, and start again."
Margaret no longer tried to direct; she sat with her face towards him, leaving the guidance to him.
He started back in what he thought was the course they had just traversed. But they did not come to the defile of flowers; and suddenly they lost sight of their beacon.
"We shall see it again in a moment," he said.
But they did not see it. They floated in and out among the great cypresses, he plunged his paddle down over the side, and struck bottom; they were out of the channel and in the shallows – the great Monnlungs Lake.
"We don't see it yet," she said. Then she gave a cry, and shrank towards him. They had floated close to one of the trees, and there on its trunk, not three feet from her, was a creature of the lizard family, large, gray-white in hue like the bark, flat, and yet fat; it moved its short legs slowly in the light of their torches; no doubt it was experiencing a sensation of astonishment, there had never been in its memory a bright light in the Monnlungs before.
Winthrop laughed, it did him good to see Margaret Harold cowering and shuddering over such a slight cause as that. The boat had floated where it listed for a moment or two while he laughed, and now he caught sight of their beacon again.
"That laugh was lucky," he said, as he paddled rapidly back towards the small light-house. "Now I shall go in exactly the wrong direction – I mean what seems such to me."
"Oh, must we go again?"
"I don't suppose you wish to remain permanently floating at the foot of this tree?" He looked at her. "You think we're lost, you're frightened. We're not lost at all, and I know exactly what to do; trust yourself to me, I will bring you safely out."
"You don't know this swamp, it's not so easy. I'm thinking of myself."
"I know you are not. But I think of nothing else." He said this impetuously enough.
They started on their second search. And at the end of five minutes they had again lost sight of their beacon. He paddled to the right and back again; then off to the left and back; he went forward a little way, then in the opposite direction; but they did not see the gleam of their guide, nor did they find the defile of flowers.
Suddenly there rose, close to them, a cry. It was not loud, but it was thrilling, it conveyed an impression of agonized fear.
"What was that?" said Margaret. She did not speak the words aloud, but syllabled them with her lips; involuntarily she drew nearer to him.
"I don't know what it was myself, exactly," he answered; "some bird or other small creature, probably, caught by a snake or alligator. It only sounded strange because it is so still here, our nerves are affected, I presume."
"You mean that mine are. I know they are, I will try to be more sensible."
He pursued his tentative course. But the watery vistas seemed only to grow wilder. They never had a desolate appearance; on the contrary there was something indescribably luxuriant, riotously so, in the still lake with its giant trees, its scented air, its masses of flowers. At length something dark, that was not a tree trunk, nor a group of tree trunks, loomed up on their right. Their torches outlined it more plainly; it was square and low.
"It's a house" Margaret said, in the same repressed whisper. "Oh, don't go near it!"
"Why – it's deserted, can't you see that? There's no living thing there, unless you count ghosts – there may be the ghost of some fugitive slave. The door, I suppose, is on the other side." And he paddled towards it.
The cabin – it was no more than a cabin – had been built upon the great roots of four cypresses, which had happened to stand in a convenient position for such a purpose; the planks of the floor had been nailed down across these, and the sides formed of rough boards braced by small beams which stretched back to the tree trunks; the roof was a network of the large vines of the swamp, thickly thatched with the gray moss, now black with age and decay. The door was gone; Winthrop brought the boat up towards the dark entrance; the sill was but an inch or two above the water.
They looked within, the light from their torches illuminating the central portion. And as they looked, they saw a slight waving motion on the floor. Were the planks oscillating a little, or was it dark water flowing over the place?
At first they could not distinguish; then in another instant they could. It was not water; it was the waving, squirming bodies of snakes.
Winthrop had given the canoe a quick swerve. But before they could have counted one, the creatures, soundlessly, had all disappeared.
"Men are queer animals," he said; "I should have liked one more good peep. But of course I won't go back."
"Yes – go."
"You are prepared to humor me in everything? Well, it won't take an instant." They were but ten feet away; he gave a stroke with his paddle and brought the canoe up to the entrance again.
Within there was now nothing, their torch-light shone on the bare glistening boards of the floor. But stay – yes, there was; something white in one corner; he took one of the torches, and held it within for a moment. Margaret gave a cry; the light was shining on bones – a white breastbone with the ribs attached, and larger bones near.
He threw the torch into the water, where it went out with a hiss, and sent the canoe rapidly away. This time he did not stop.
Margaret had hidden her face in her hands. "Well," he said, still urging the light boat along, "the last hunter who occupied that cabin was not as tidy in his habits as he might have been; he left the remains of the last bear he had had for dinner behind him."
"Are you sure?" she asked, without looking up, still shuddering.
"Perfectly."
Winthrop held that in some cases a lie was right.
He paddled on for a few minutes more.
"Here's your reward for humoring me. Isn't this the 'narrow place?'"
And it was.
"Now that we've found it, hadn't we better try to go back?" he suggested.
"I will do as you think best."
"You're thoroughly cowed, aren't you? By the skeleton of a bear."
"I think I am tired," she answered.
"Think? You mean you know you are." The mask of jesting had dropped again. "How much more of this horrible place is there – I mean beyond here?"
"We are a good deal more than half-way through; three quarters, I think."
"Can we get out at the other end? Is there an outlet?"
"Yes – a creek. It takes you, I believe – I have never been so far as that – to Eustis Landing, a pier on the St. John's beyond ours."
"If we try to go back we shall have to go through that damnable aisle of miasma again."
"Perhaps I should not faint this time," she said, humbly.
"You don't know whether you would or not; I can't take any risks."
He spoke with bluntness. She sat looking at him; her eyes had a pathetic expression, her womanish fears and her fatigue had relaxed her usual guard.
"You think I'm rough. Let me be rough while I can, Margaret!"
He sent the boat forward towards the outlet, not back through the aisle of flowers. "We'll go on," he said.
After a while she called her husband's name again.
"What's the use of doing that?" he asked. "He isn't here."
"Oh, but I am sure he is. Where else could he be?"
"How should I know? – Where he was for eight years, perhaps."
Presently they came to a species of canebrake, very dense and high; there was no green in sight, only the canes. The channel wound tortuously through the rattling mass, the slight motion of the water made by the canoe caused the canes to rattle.
"Keep watch, please," he said; "it's not so wet here. It wouldn't be amusing to set such a straw-stack on fire."
While they were making their way through this labyrinth, there came a crash of thunder.
"The storm at last, and we haven't heard the least sound of the tornado that came before it! That shows what a place this is," he said. "We might as well be in the heart of a mountain. Well, even if we do suffocate, at least we're safe from falling trees; if the lightning has struck one, it can't come down, wedged in as it is in that great tight roof overhead."
There came another crash. "I believe it grows hotter and hotter," he went on, throwing down his hat. "I am beginning to feel a little queer myself; I have to tell you, you know, in order that you may be able to act with – with discrimination, as Dr. Kirby would say."
She had turned quickly. "Do you feel faint?"
"Faint?" he answered, scoffingly. "Never in the world. Am I a woman? I feel perfectly well, and strong as an ox, only – I see double."
"Yes, that is the air of the swamp."
She took off the black lace scarf she was wearing, dipped it into the stream, and told him to bind it round his forehead above the eyes.
"Nonsense!" he said, impatiently.
But she moved towards him, and kneeling on the canoe's bottom, bound the lace tightly round his forehead herself, fastening it with her little gold pin.
"I must look like a Turk," he exclaimed when she released him.
But the wet bandage cleared his vision; he could see plainly again.
After another five minutes, however, back came the blur. "Shall we ever get out of this accursed hole?" he cried, pressing his hands on his eyes.
"I can paddle a little; let me take the oar."
But he dashed more water on his head, and pushed her hands away. "Women never know! It's much better for me to keep on. But you must direct me, – say 'one stroke on the right,' 'two on the left,' and so on."
"Oh, why did I ever bring you in here?" she moaned, giving no directions at all, but looking at his contracted eyes with the tears welling in her own.
"See here, Margaret, – I really don't know what would happen if I should put this oar down and – and let you pity me! I can tell you once. Now be warned." He spoke with roughness.
Her tears were arrested. "Two strokes on the right," she said, quickly.
They went on their course again, he putting his oar into the water with a peculiar deliberation, as though he were taking great care not to disturb its smoothness; but this was because he was guiding himself by sense of touch. It was not that all was dark before him, that he saw nothing, it would have been much easier if there had been nothing to see; but whether his eyes were open or closed he looked constantly and in spite of himself into a broad circular space of vivid scarlet, in the centre of which a smaller and revolving disk of colors like those of peacocks' feathers, continually dilating and contracting, wearied and bewildered him. In spite of this visual confusion he kept on.
Their progress was slow. "I think I'll stop for a while," he said, after a quarter of an hour had passed. They were still among the rattling canes, his voice had a drowsy tone.
"Oh, don't stop now; we're nearly out."
But he had stopped.
"If I had had any idea you would tire so soon – Of course if I must take the oar – and blister my hands – "
"Keep back in your place," he cried, angrily, as she made a movement as though she were coming to take the paddle from him.
She went on giving the directions, she could scarcely keep the tremor from her voice, but she did keep it. When she looked at his closed eyes, and saw the effort he was making – every time he lifted his arms it was like lifting a gigantic weight, his fancy made it so – she longed to take the oar from him and let him rest. But she did not dare to, he must not sleep now. She put out her hand and touched an edge of his coat furtively, where he would not perceive it; the gentle little touch seemed to give her courage to say, in a tone of sarcastic compassion, "If, after all, you are going to faint, though you assured me – "
"Faint!" said Winthrop, – "what are you talking about?" He straightened himself and threw back his head. Her taunt had answered its purpose, it had made him angry and in his anger he sent the boat forward with more force.
Another anxious ten minutes, and then, "We're out!" she said, as she saw wide water in front. "Now it will be cooler." The channel broadened, they left the rattling canes behind.
Water was coming slowly down the trees, not in drops but in dark streaks; this was rain that had made its way through the roof of foliage, scanty fringe of the immense torrent now falling upon the drenched ground outside.
"I shall go through to that place you spoke of – Eustis Landing, wasn't it?" said Winthrop.
"Oh, you are better!"
Her relief showed itself in these words. But much more in her face; its strained tension gave way, her tears fell. She dried them in silence.
"Because I can speak of something outside of this infernal bog? Yes, I shall get you safely through now. And myself also. But – it hasn't been easy!"
"Oh, I know that."
"I beg your pardon, no, you don't; not the half."
In a moment or two more he announced that he was beginning to see "something besides fireworks." She still continued, however, to direct him.
The swamp had been growing more open. At length the channel brought them to a spectral lake, with a few dead trees in it here and there hung with white moss. "I remember this place, the creek opens out just opposite. At last it's over!"
"And at last I can see. But I must take this thing off; it binds me." And he unloosed and threw off her lace scarf.
They found the creek and entered. "It seems strange to see solid ground again, doesn't it?" he said.
"Then you can see it?"
"As well as ever."
The creek brought them to a waste that was open to the sky.
"Now we can breathe," he said; "I feel as though I should never want to be under a tree branch again!"
It was not very dark; there was a moon somewhere behind the gray clouds that closely covered the sky. The great storm had gone westward, carrying with it the tornado and the rain, and now a cool, moderate, New-England-feeling wind was beginning to blow.
Winthrop glanced back. The great trees of the Monnlungs loomed up in a long dark line against the sky; from the low level of the boat in the flat waste they looked like a line of mountains.
"All the same, you know," he said, contradictorily, "it was very beautiful in there."
The creek was wide; he went on rapidly. He was quite himself again. "You look fearfully worn," he said, after a while.
"Must we have all these torches now?" She spoke with irritation, she could not get away from their light.
"Not if you object to them." He extinguished all but one. "Now put on some of those wraps; it's cold."
"I do not need them."
"Don't be childish." (There was no doubt but that he was himself again.) "Here, let me help you on with this cloak."
She submitted.
It took them three-quarters of an hour to reach the landing.
"This is it, I presume," he said, as he saw the dim outlines of two white houses at a little distance on the low shore. "I will knock them up, and get some sort of a place where you can rest."
"If there is any one to row, I should much rather go directly home."
"Always unreasonable. Give me your hands." He leaned forward and took them. "Cold as ice, – I thought so. You must come up to the house and go to bed."
"I could not sleep. Let me go home; it is the only place for me."
He still held her hands. "Very well," he said.
"Perhaps they have found Lanse," she went on.
"Old Dinah and Rose? Very likely."
In a few minutes he returned, followed by two negroes, one of whom carried a lantern. They got out their own boat. Winthrop helped Margaret into it, and took his place beside her; their canoe was taken in tow. With strong regular strokes the men rowed down the creek, and out on the broad St. John's.
When they came in sight of the house on the point it was gleaming with light; Margaret gave an exclamation.
Dismissing the men, Winthrop went up the path after her. "I am sure he has come," she said, hurrying on.
"Who? Lanse? Oh no, it's those old goblins of yours who have illuminated in this way; it's their idea of keeping watch for you."
The doors had been left unfastened, they entered. Inside, everything was as brilliant as though the house had been made ready for a ball. But there was not a sound, no one stirred. They went through to the kitchen; and there, each on her knees before a wooden chair, with her head resting upon it on her folded arms, appeared the little Africans, sound asleep; the soles of their shoes, turned up behind them, seemed almost as long as they were.
Winthrop roused them. "Here," he said; "we're back. Make some coffee for your mistress as quickly as you can; and you, Rose, light a fire in the sitting-room."
The queer little old women ran about like frightened hens. They tumbled over each other, and let everything drop. Winthrop stood over them sternly, he took the pitch-pine from the distracted Rose and lighted the fire himself. "Now go and put out all those lights," he said; "and bring in the coffee the moment it's ready."
He had made Margaret sit down in a low easy-chair, still wrapped in her cloak, and had placed a footstool for her feet; the fire danced and sparkled, she sat with her head thrown back, her eyes closed.