IX
FERDIE had been two weeks at Romney.
Halcyon days they had seemed, each one beautiful from morning to night, with blue skies and golden sunshine; blossoms covered the trees, the air was full of perfume. Ferdie must always be doing something; besides the hunting and fishing, he had made a new swing, a new dock; he had taught the negroes base-ball; he had rowed and sailed hither and thither – up the river, out to sea, and north and south along the sounds, paying visits at the various islands when Cicely desired them. Every one was delighted with him, from Miss Sabrina down to the smallest darky; the captains of the Inland Route steamers grew accustomed to seeing him on the dock at Jupiter Light; the store-keeper on the mainland opposite looked out every morning for his sail coming across the Sound. Cicely, in the same state of mute bliss, accompanied him everywhere; Miss Sabrina went whenever the excursion was not too long. The negroes followed him about in a troop; of their own accord they gave him the title of “young marse.”
Through these days Eve felt herself an alien; Cicely said nothing to her save when she was with the others; she never came to her in her own room. And Eve could not feel that this neglect was caused by dislike; it was simply the egotism of perfect happiness. When Eve was present, Cicely talked to her; when she was not present, Cicely hardly remembered her existence. Miss Sabrina was not quite so forgetful, but she too was absorbed; Eve sometimes sat all the evening without speaking; fortunately she could make her stay short, under the pretext of not disturbing Jack by coming in late. She was not a timid woman, not a woman easily disheartened; each long, solitary day (for she seldom accompanied them), each silent evening, only strengthened her purpose of carrying away the child. She kept him with her constantly; Cicely allowed it, and Ferdie, after one or two good-natured attempts to carry off the little boy for a romp, left him undisturbed to his aunt. Whether Cicely had told him to do this, Eve did not know.
Strangely enough, Ferdie talked to her more than the others did. Several times, seeing her in the grove with Jack, he had come out to join her. And always, as he approached, Eve would make some excuse, and send the child farther away; this action on her part was involuntary. One morning she had gone to the beach. She had been there half an hour when she saw his figure emerging from the bush-bordered road. “Take Jack away,” she said quickly to Dilsey.
Dilsey, vexed at being ordered off when handsome “young marse” was approaching, took her charge round a point entirely out of sight, so that Eve and Ferdie were alone. The child gone, Eve could turn all her attention to the man by her side; her watching mood came upon her, the mood in which she spent her evenings. Ferdie had thrown himself down on the sand; handsome as he was, Eve had discovered faults in his face; the features were in danger of becoming too sharp; a little more, and the cheeks would be thin. The mouth had a flattening at the corners, a partly unconscious, partly voluntary action of the muscles, like that which accompanies a “dare” (so Eve described it to herself) on the part of a boy who has come off conqueror in one fight, but who is expecting another and severer one in a moment. This expression (it was visible when he was silent) and a look in his eyes sometimes – these two things seemed to Eve signs of the curse. They were slight signs, however; they would not have been discovered by one woman in a thousand; for Ferdie was not only handsome, there was also something charming about him. But Eve had small admiration for the charming.
To-day, as Ferdie lounged beside her, she determined to try an experiment.
“I am very anxious to have Jack,” she began.
“It seems to me that you do have him; it’s a complete possession,” answered Ferdie, laughing; “I’ve scarcely been able to touch the youngster since I came.”
“I mean that I want him to live with me, as though he were my own child; I would bring him up with all possible care.”
“Have you made a vow, then, never to marry?” Ferdie demanded, looking at her with a merry gleam in his eyes.
“Should you object – if Cicely were willing to give him to me?” Eve continued, a slight haughtiness in her manner alone replying to his remark.
“I suppose I couldn’t, though I’m fond of the little chap.” (“Fond!” Eve thought. She looked at him, with parted lips, in suspense.) “But I can’t imagine Cicely’s consenting,” Ferdie went on; “she is devoted to the child.”
“Not so much as she is to you.”
“Do you want me to urge her to give him to you?”
“Yes,” Eve answered.
“Why do you want him? For your own pleasure?”
Eve hesitated a moment. “Partly.”
“Are you by any possibility fancying that you can take better care of him than we can?” asked Ferdie, relapsing into his laugh, and sending another pebble skimming over the shining waters. “Leaving Cicely aside, I am the jolliest of fathers.”
“It must be that he does not know,” Eve thought; “whatever his faults, hypocrisy is not one of them.”
But this only made him the more terrible to her – a man who could change so unconsciously into a savage.
“Granting the jolliness, I wish you would ask Cicely,” she said; “do it for my sake. I am lonely, I shall grow lonelier. It would be everything to me to have him.”
“Of course you will grow lonelier,” said Ferdie. He turned towards her, leaning on his elbow. “Come, let me advise you; don’t be a forlorn old maid. All women ought to marry; it is much better for them.”
“Are they then so sure to be happy?” asked Eve, sarcastically.
“Of course they are. – The nice ones.”
Eve looked at him. “Even when married to brutes? – to madmen?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t select a brute. As for the madmen, they are locked up,” answered Ferdie, comfortably.
Eve rose. “I don’t know what I shall say next – if I stay here,” was her thought.
“I wish you knew my brother Paul,” remarked Ferdie as he lifted himself from the sand. “I can’t argue with you, I can’t put you down” (his smile as he said “put you down” was wonderfully sweet). “But he could – Paul could; and what’s more, he would, too! He hates a woman who goes on as you do.”
“Your brother lives in Canada, I believe?” said Eve, coldly.
“Canada? – what gave you that idea? He loathes Canada. He has charge of a mine on Lake Superior. He has always worked tremendously hard, poor old Paul! I have never approved of it, such a steady grind as that.”
“What is the name of the place?”
“Port aux Pins; called by the natives Potterpins. Are you thinking of going there?”
“I may,” Eve answered. Her tone was defiant in spite of herself; what did she care for Port aux Pins and his brother, save for their connection with his wretched self?
They had begun to walk towards home; Dilsey was in advance with Jack. “I beg you to urge Cicely to let me have him,” Eve began again, her eyes resting on Jack’s little wagon.
“You have made up your mind to ask a favor of me; you must want it terribly,” Ferdie responded. He took off his hat and let the breeze blow over his forehead. “I will do what I can for you. Of course we cannot, Cicely and I, give up her child to you entirely; but he might live with you for part of the year, as you desire it so much. My intention is to go back to Valparaiso; I like the life there, and I shall make it my home; there are excellent houses to be had, I have one in view at this moment. Later, of course, Cicely would wish her boy to come to her there. But in the meantime, while he is still so young – yes, I will do what I can for you; you may count upon me.”
“Thanks,” answered Eve. Her words were humble, but she did not look humble as she spoke them; Ferdie with his favors and his good-nature seemed to her more menacing than ever.
The tranquil life went on. Every morning she said to herself, “To-day something must happen!” But the Arcadian hours continued, and two more weeks passed slowly by. Eve began to hate the sunshine, the brilliant, undimmed southern stars.
“My dear, you are growing paler,” said Miss Sabrina one day. “Perhaps this sea-air of ours is not good for you.”
Eve wanted to reply: “Is it good to be watching every instant? – to be listening and starting and thinking one hears something?” “You are right; it is not,” she answered aloud; “all the same, I will stay awhile longer, if you will let me.”
“Oh, my dear – when we want you to live here!”
“Perhaps I shall die here,” Eve responded, with a laugh.
Miss Sabrina looked at her in surprise; for the laugh was neither gentle nor sweet.
Eve was tired, tired mentally and physically; this state of passive waiting taxed her; action of some sort, even though accompanied by the hardest conditions, would have been easier to her ardent unconquered will. She occupied herself with Jack; she said as little as she could to Ferdie; and she watched Cicely. Underneath this watchfulness there grew up a strong contempt for love.
X
“EVE!” A hand on Eve’s shoulder.
Eve sat up in bed with a start; Cicely stood beside her, candle in hand. “Help me to dress Jack,” she said.
Eve was out of bed in an instant. She lighted her own candle.
Cicely lifted the sleeping child from his crib, and began hastily to dress him. Eve brought all the little garments quickly. “Are you going to take him out of the house?” she asked. (They spoke in whispers.)
“Yes.”
Eve threw on her own clothes.
After a moment, during which the hands of both women moved rapidly, Eve said, “Where is he?”
“Outside – out of the house for the moment. But he will come back; and then, if he comes down this hall, we must escape.”
“Where? We must have the same ideas, you know,” said Eve, buttoning her dress, and taking her hat and shawl from the wardrobe.
“I thought we could go through the ballroom, and out by the north wing.”
“And once outside?”
“We must hide.”
“But where?”
“In the thicket.”
“It isn’t a very large space. Supposing Jack should cry?”
Cicely went on fastening Jack’s little coat. “I can’t talk!”
“You needn’t,” said Eve; “I’ll take care of you!”
The hasty dressing completed, the two candles were extinguished. Jack had fallen asleep again. Cicely held him herself; she would not let Eve take him. They opened the door softly, and stood together outside in the dark hall. The seconds passed and turned into minutes; the minutes became three, then five; but the space of time seemed a half-hour. Eve, standing still in the darkness, recovered her coolness; she stepped noiselessly back into her room for a moment or two; then she returned and resumed the watch. Cicely’s little figure standing beside her looked very small.
By-and-by the door at the far end of the hall opened, and for the first time in her life Eve saw a vision: Ferdie, half dressed and carrying a lighted candle, appeared, his eyes fierce and fixed, his cheeks flushed. At that moment his beauty was terrible; but he saw nothing, heard nothing; he was like a man listening to something afar off.
“Come,” whispered Cicely.
Swiftly and noiselessly she went round the angle of the corridor, opened a door, and, closing it behind them, led the way to the north wing; Eve followed, or rather she kept by her side. After a breathless winding transit through the labyrinth of halls and chambers, they reached the ballroom.
“Now we can run,” Cicely whispered. Silently they ran.
Before they had quite reached the door at the far end, they heard a sound behind them, and saw a gleam across the floor: he had not waited in Eve’s room, then; he had divined their flight, and was following. Cicely’s hand swiftly found and lifted the latch; she opened the door, and they passed through. Eve gave one glance over her shoulder; he was advancing, but he was not running; his eyes had the same stare.
Cicely threw up a window, gave Jack to Eve, climbed by the aid of a chair to the sill and jumped out; then she put up her arms for Jack, and Eve followed her; they drew down the window behind them from the outside. There was a moon, but dark clouds obscured its light; the air was still. Cicely led the way to the thicket; pushing her way within, she sank down, the bushes crackling loudly as she did so. “Hurry!” she said to Eve.
Eve crouched beside her beneath the dense foliage. They could see nothing, but they could hear. They remained motionless.
After several minutes of suspense they heard a step on the plank floor of the veranda; he had made his way out. Then followed silence; the silence was worse than the sound of his steps; they had the sense that he was close upon them.
After some time without another sound, suddenly his candle gleamed directly over them; he had approached them unheard by the road, Eve not knowing and Cicely having forgotten that it was so near. For an instant Eve’s heart stopped beating, she thought that they were discovered; escape was cut off, for the thorns and spiny leaves held their skirts like so many hands. But the fixed eyes did not see them; after a moment the beautiful, cruel face, lit by the yellow gleam of the candle, disappeared from above; the light moved farther away. He was going down the road; every now and then they could see that he threw a ray to the right and the left, as if still searching.
“He will go through the whole thicket, now that he has the idea,” Cicely whispered. They crept into the road, Eve carrying Jack. But, once outside, Cicely took him again. They stood erect, they looked back; he and his candle were still going on towards the sea.
Cicely turned; she took a path which led to the north point. “There’s no thicket there. And if he comes, there’s a boat.”
The distance to the point was nearly a mile. The white sand of the track guided them through the dark woods.
“Shouldn’t you be safer, after all, in the house?” Eve asked.
“No, for this time he is determined to kill us; he thinks that I am some one else, a woman who is going to attack his wife; and he thinks that Jack is some other child, who has injured his Jack.”
“He shall never touch Jack! Give him to me, Cicely; he is too heavy for you.”
“I will not give him to any one – any one,” Cicely answered, panting.
As they approached the north point, the moon shone through a rift in the clouds; suddenly it was as light as day; their faces and hands were ivory white in the radiance.
“What is that on your throat, and down the front of your dress?” said Eve. “It’s wet. Why, it’s blood!”
“Yes; I am cut here a little,” Cicely answered, making a gesture with her chin towards her left shoulder; “I suppose it has begun to bleed again. He has a knife to-night. That is what makes me so afraid.”
The Sound now came into view. At the same instant Eve, looking back, perceived a point of yellow light behind them; the path was straight for a long distance, and the light was far away; but it was advancing in their direction. Little Jack, fully awakened by their rapid flight, had lifted his head, trying to see his mother’s face; as no one paid any attention to him, he began to cry. His voice seemed to make Cicely frantic; clasping him close, pressing his head down against her breast, she broke into a run.
“Get into the boat and push off, don’t wait for me; I’m in no danger,” Eve called after her. She stood there watching.
Cicely reached the beach, put Jack into the boat, and then tried to push it off. It was a heavy old row-boat, kept there for the convenience of the negroes who wished to cross to Singleton Island; to-night it was drawn up so high on the sands that with all her effort Cicely could not launch it. She strained every muscle to the utmost; in her ears there was a loud rushing sound; she paused dizzily, turning her head away from the water for a moment, and as she did so, she too saw the gleam, pale in the moonlight, far down the path. She did not scream, there was a tension in her throat which kept all sound from her parched mouth; she climbed into the boat, seized Jack, and staggered forward with the vague purpose of jumping into the water from the boat’s stern; but she did not get far, she sank suddenly down.
“She has fainted; so much the better,” Eve thought. Jack, who had fallen as his mother fell, cried loudly. “He is not hurt; at least not seriously,” she said to herself. Then, turning into the wood, she made her way back towards the advancing point of light. After some progress she stopped.
Ferdie was walking rapidly now; in his left hand he held his candle high in the air; in his right, which hung by his side, there was something that gleamed. The moonlight shone full upon his face, and Eve could see the expression, whose slight signs she had noticed, the flattening of the corners of the mouth; this was now so deepened that his lips wore a slight grin. Jack’s wail, which had ceased for several minutes, now began again, and at the same instant his moving head could be seen above the boat’s side; he had disengaged himself, and was trying to climb up higher, by the aid of one of the seats, in order to give larger vent to his astonishment and his grief.
Ferdie saw him; his shoulders made a quick movement; an inarticulate sound came from his flattened, grimacing mouth. Then he began to run towards the boat. At the same moment there was the crack, not loud, of a pistol discharged very near. The running man lunged forward and fell heavily to his knees; then to the sand. His arms made one or two spasmodic movements. Then they were still.
Eve’s figure went swiftly through the wood towards the shore; she held her skirts closely, as if afraid of their rustling sound. Reaching the boat, she made a mighty effort, both hands against the bow, her body slanting forward, her feet far behind her, deep in the sand and pressing against it. She was very strong, and the boat moved, it slid down slowly and gratingly; more and more of its long length entered the water, until at last only the bow still touched the sand. Eve jumped in, pushed off with an oar, and then, stepping over Cicely’s prostrate form to reach one of the seats, she sat down and began to row, brushing little Jack aside with her knee (he fell down more amazed and grief-stricken than ever), and placing her feet against the next seat as a brace. She rowed with long strokes and with all her might; perhaps he was not much hurt, after all; perhaps he too had a pistol, and could reach them. She watched the beach breathlessly.
The Sound was smooth; before long a wide space of water, with the silvery path of the moon across it, separated them from Abercrombie Island. Still she could not stop. She looked at Cicely’s motionless figure; Jack, weary with crying, had crawled as far as one of her knees and laid his head against it, sobbing “Aunty Eve? Aunty Eve?”
“Yes, darling,” said Eve, mechanically, still watching the other shore.
At last, with her hands smarting, her arms strained, she reached Singleton Island. After beaching the boat, she knelt down and chafed Cicely’s temples, wetting her handkerchief by dipping it over the boat’s side, and then pressing it on the dead-white little face. Cicely sighed. Then she opened her eyes and looked up, only half consciously, at the sky. Next she looked at Eve, who was bending over her, and memory came back.
“We are safe,” Eve said, answering the look; “we are on Singleton Island, and no one is following us.” She lifted the desperate little Jack and put him in his mother’s arms.
Cicely sat up, she kissed her child passionately. But she fell back again, Eve supporting her.
“Let me see that – that place,” Eve said. With nervous touch she turned down the little lace ruffle, which was dark and limp with the stain of the life-tide.
“It’s nothing,” murmured Cicely. The cut had missed its aim, it was low down on the throat, near the collar-bone; it was a flesh-wound, not dangerous.
Cicely pushed away Eve’s hands and sat up. “Where is Ferdie?” she demanded.
“He – he is on the other island,” Eve answered, hesitatingly. “Don’t you remember that he followed us? – that we were trying to escape?”
“Well, we have escaped,” said Cicely. “And now I want to know where he is.”
She got on her feet, stepped out of the boat to the sand, and lifted Jack out; she muffled the child in a shawl, and made him walk with her to the edge of the water. Here she stood looking at the home-island, straining her eyes in the misty moonlight.
Eve followed her. “I think the farther away we go, Cicely, the better; at least for the present. The steamer stops at Singleton Landing at dawn; we can go on board as we are, and get what is necessary in Savannah.”
“Why don’t I see him on the beach?” said Cicely. “I could see him if he were there – I could see him walking. If he followed us, as you say, why don’t I see him!” She put a hand on each side of her mouth, making a circle of them, and called with all her strength, “Ferdie? Fer-die?”
“Are you mad?” said Eve.
“Fer-die?” cried Cicely again.
Eve pulled down her hands. “He can’t hear you.”
“Why can’t he?” said Cicely, turning and looking at her.
“It’s too far,” answered Eve, in a trembling voice.
“Perhaps he has gone for a boat,” Cicely suggested.
“Yes, perhaps he has,” Eve assented, eagerly. And for a moment the two women gazed southward with the same hopefulness.
Then Eve came back to reality. “What are we thinking of? Do you want to have Jack killed?”
Cicely threw up her arms. “Oh, if it weren’t for Jack!” Her despair at that moment gave her majesty.
“Give him to me; let me take him away,” urged Eve again.
“I will never give him to any one; I will never leave him, never.”
“Then you must both go with me for the present; we will go farther north than Savannah; we will go to New York.”
“There is only one place I will go to – one person, and that is Paul; Ferdie loves Paul; – I will go nowhere else.”
“Very well; we will go to Paul.”
The struggle was over; Cicely’s voice had grown lifeless. Little Jack, tired out, laid himself despairingly down on the sand; she sat down beside him, rearranged the shawl under him and over him, and then, as he fell asleep, she clasped her hands round her knees, and waited inertly, her eyes fixed on the opposite beach.
Eve, standing behind her, also watched the home-island. “If I could only see him!” was her constant prayer. She was even ready to accept the sight of a boat shooting from the shadows which lay dark on the western side, a boat coming in pursuit; he would have had time, perhaps, to get to the skiff which was kept on that side, not far from the point; he knew where all the boats were. Five minutes – six – had elapsed since they landed; yes, he would have had time. She looked and looked; she was almost sure that she saw a boat advancing, and clasped her hands in joy.
But where could they go, in case he should really come? To Singleton House, where there was only a lame old man, and women? There was no door there which he could not batter down, no lock which could keep him out – the terrible, beautiful madman. No; it was better to think, to believe, that he could not come.
She walked back to the trees that skirted the beach, leaned her clasped arms against the trunk of one of them, and, laying her head upon the arm that was uppermost, stood motionless.