Kitabı oku: «Jupiter Lights», sayfa 15

XXIV

MIDSUMMER at Port aux Pins. The day was very hot; there was no feeling of dampness, such as belongs sometimes to the lower-lake towns in the dog-days, up here the air remained dry and clear and pure; but the splendid sunshine had almost the temperature of flame; it seemed as if the miles of forest must take fire, as from a burning-glass.

Eve stood at the open window of Paul’s little parlor. A figure passed in the road outside, but she did not notice it. Reappearing, it opened the gate and came in. “Many happy returns – of cooler weather! We ought to pity the Eyetalians; what must their sufferings be on such a day as this!”

Eve gazed at the speaker unseeingly. Then recognition arrived; – “Oh, Mr. Hollis.”

Hollis came into the house; he joined her in the parlor. “My best respects. Can’t help thinking of the miserable Eyetalians.” Eve made no reply. “Just heard a piece of news,” Hollis went on. “Paul has sold his Clay County iron. He would have made five times as much by holding on. But he has been so jammed lately by unexpected demands made upon him that he had no other course; all his brother’s South American speculations have come to grief, and the creditors have come down on him like a thousand of brick!”

“Will he have to pay much?” asked Eve, her lassitude gone.

“More than he’s got,” answered Hollis, putting his hands still more deeply into his trousers pockets, his long, lean, fish-like figure projecting itself forward into space from the sixth rib. “I don’t get this from Paul, you may depend; he don’t blab. But the law sharks who came up here to get hold of whatever they could (for you see Paul has always been a partner in his brother’s enterprises, so that gives ’em a chance), these scamps talked to me some. So I know. But even the sale of his Clay County iron won’t clear Paul – he will have to guarantee other debts; it will take him years to clear it all off, unless he has something better than his present salary to do it with.”

“You ought to have told me. I have money.”

“I guess he wouldn’t take it. He’s had pretty hard lines all round; he wanted terribly bad to go straight to Ferdie, as soon as he heard he was shot. But Mrs. Morrison – she had come here, you know; and he had all Ferdie’s expenses to think of too, so that kept him grinding along. But he wanted awfully to go; he thought the world and all of Ferdie.”

“I know he did,” said Eve. And now her face was like a tragic mask – deadly white, with a frown, the eyes under her straight brows looking at him fixedly.

“Oh, eheu!” thought Hollis distressfully, disgustedly. “You screw yourself up to tell her all these things about him, because you think it will please her; and this is the way she takes ’em!”

He looked at her again; she gave no sign. Feeling painfully insignificant and helpless, he turned and left the room.

A few minutes later Paul came in. “You have sold your Clay County iron!” said Eve.

“I have always intended to sell it.”

“Not at a sacrifice.”

“One does as one can – a business transaction.”

“How much money have you sent to your brother all these years?”

“I don’t know that it is – I don’t know what interest you can have in it,” Paul answered.

“You mean that it is not my business. Oh, don’t be so hard! Say three words just for once.”

“Why, I’ll say as many as you like, Eve. Ferdie was one of the most brilliant fellows in the world; if he had lived, all his investments would have turned out finely, he was sure of a fortune some time.”

“And, in the meanwhile, you supported him; you have always done it.”

“You are mistaken. I advanced him money now and then when he happened to be short, but it was always for the time being only; he would have paid me back if he had lived.”

The door opened, and the judge came in. “I’m glad you’re here,” said Paul; “now we can decide, we three, upon what is best to be done. The doctor says that while this heat is very bad for Cicely, travel would be still worse; she cannot go anywhere by train, and hardly by steamer – though that is better; there would be no use, then, in trying to take her south.”

“It’s ten times hotter here to-day than I ever saw it at Romney,” interposed the judge. “It’s a tophet – this town of yours!”

“I was thinking also of Miss Abercrombie’s illness,” Paul went on. “Though her fever is light, her room is still a sick-room, and that would depress Cicely, I feel sure. But, meanwhile, the poor girl is hourly growing weaker, and so this is what I have thought of: we will go into camp in the pines near Jupiter Light. Don’t you remember how much good camp-life did her before?”

Six days later they were living in the pine woods at Jupiter. This time lodges had been built; the nurse accompanied Cicely; they were a party of eight, without counting the cook and the Indians.

At first Cicely remained in much the same state, she recognized no one but Jack.

Jack continued to be his mother’s most constant adorer; he climbed often into her lap, and, putting his arms round her neck, “loved” her with his cheek against hers, and with all his little heart; he came trotting up many times a day, to stroke her face with his dimpled hand. Cicely looked at him, but did not answer. After ten days in the beneficent forest, however, her strength began to revive, and their immediate fears were calmed. One evening she asked for her grandfather, and when he came hastily in and bent over her couch, she smiled and kissed him. He sat down beside her, holding her hand; after a while she fell into a sleep. The old man went softly out, he went to the camp-fire, and made it blaze, throwing on fresh pine-cones recklessly.

“Sixty-five in the shade,” remarked Hollis.

“This Northern air is always abominable. Will you make me a taste of something spicy? I feel the need of it. Miss Bruce, – Eve – Cicely knows me!”

Eve looked at his brightened face, at the blazing fire, the rough table with the tumblers, the flask, and the lemons. Hollis had gone to the kitchen to get hot water.

“She knows me,” repeated the judge, triumphantly. “She sent for me herself.”

Paul now appeared, and the good news was again told. Paul had just come from Port aux Pins. After establishing them at Jupiter, he had been obliged to return to town immediately, and he had remained there closely occupied for more than a week. He sat down, refusing Hollis’s proffered glass. The nurse came out, and walked to and fro before Cicely’s lodge, breathing the aromatic air; this meant that Cicely still slept. Eve had seated herself a little apart from the fire; her figure was in the shadow. Her mind was filled with but one thought: “Cicely better? Then must I tell her?” By-and-by the conversation of the others came to her.

“Hanging is too good for them,” said the judge.

“But wasn’t it supposed to be a chance shot?” remarked Hollis. “Not intentional, exactly?”

“That makes no difference. You may call it absolute chance, if you like; but the negro who dares to lift a pistol against a white man should not be left alive five minutes afterwards,” declared the old planter, implacably.

“You’d ought to have lived in the days of religious wars,” drawled Hollis. “I don’t know anything else carnivorous enough to suit you.”

“You must be a Quaker, sir! Tennant feels as I do, he’d shoot at sight.”

“Oh no, he wouldn’t,” said Hollis. “He ain’t a Southerner.”

“Tennant can speak for himself,” said the judge, confidently.

“I’d shoot the man who shot my brother,” answered Paul. “I’d go down there to-morrow – I should have gone long ago – if I thought there was the least chance of finding him.” A dark flush rose in his face. “I’m afraid – even if it was an unintentional shot – that I should want to kill that man just the same; I should be a regular savage!”

“Would you never forgive him?” asked Eve’s voice from the shadow.

“Blood for blood!” responded Paul, hotly. “No, not unless I killed him; then I might.”

Eve rose.

Paul got up. “Oh, are you going?” But she did not hear him; she had gone to her lodge. He sat down again. She did not reappear that night.

The next morning she went off for a solitary walk. By chance her steps took the direction of a small promontory that jutted sharply into the lake, its perpendicular face rising to a height of forty feet from the deep water below; she had been here several times before, and knew the place well; it was about a mile from the camp. As she sat there, Paul’s figure appeared through the trees. He came straight to her. “I have been looking for you, I tried to find you last night.” He paused a moment. “Eve, don’t you see what I’ve come for? Right in the midst of all this grief and trouble I’ve found out something. It’s just this, Eve: I love you.”

She tried to rise, but he put his hand on her shoulder to keep her where she was. “Oh, but I do, you needn’t doubt it,” he went on, with an amused smile – amused at himself; “in some way or other the thing has come about, I may say, in spite of me. I never thought it would. But here ’tis – with a vengeance! I think of you constantly, I can’t help thinking of you; I recognize, at last, that the thing is unchangeable, that it’s for life; have you I must.” The words were despotic, but the tone was entreating; and the eyes, looking down upon her, were caressing – imploring. “Yes, I’m as helpless as any one,” Paul went on, smiling as he said it; “I can’t sleep, even. Come, take me; I’m not such a bad fellow, after all – I really think I’m not. And as regards my feeling for you, you need not be troubled; it’s strong enough!”

She quailed under his ardor.

“I haven’t spoken before because there has been so much to do,” Paul continued; “there has been Cicely, and then I’ve been harassed about business; I’ve been in a box, and trying to get out. Besides, I wasn’t perfectly sure that my time had come.” He laughed. “I’m sure now.” He took her in his arms. “Don’t let us make any delays, Eve; we’re not so young, either of us. Not that you need be afraid that you’re to be the less happy on that account; I’ll see to that!”

She broke from him.

But again he came to her, he took her hands, and, kneeling, laid his forehead upon them. “I will be as humble as you like; only – be good to me. I long for it, I must have it.”

A sob rose in her throat. He sprang up. “Don’t do that! Why, I want to make you absolutely happy, if I can. We shall have troubles enough, and perhaps we shall have sorrows, but at least we shall be together; you must never leave me, and I will do all I can to be less rough. But on your side there’s one thing, Eve: you must love me.” These last words were murmured in her ear.

She drew herself away from him. The expression of her face was almost like death.

“You look as though you were afraid of me! I thought you loved me, Eve?”

“I do.”

“Pretend you are a man, then, long enough to say ‘yes’ without any more circumlocution. We will be married at Port aux Pins. Then we can take care of Cicely together.”

“I shall never marry.”

“Yes, you will.”

“I do not wish to leave Cicely.”

“She wouldn’t care about that. She isn’t even fond of you.”

“Oh, what shall I say to you?” cried Eve, her hands dropping by her sides. “Listen: it will be absolutely impossible for you to change my determination. But I am so horribly unhappy that I do believe I cannot stand anything more – any more contests with you. Leave me to myself; say nothing to me. But don’t drive me away; at least let me stay near you.”

“In my arms, Eve.”

“Let me stay near you; see you; hear you talk; but that is all.”

“And how long do you suppose that could last? It’s a regular woman’s idea: nonsense.”

“Paul, be merciful!”

“Merciful? Oh, yes!” He took her again in his arms.

“I swear to you that I cannot marry you,” she said, trembling as his cheek touched hers. “Since I’ve known you I haven’t wanted to die, I’ve wanted to live – live a long life. But now I do want to die; there is a barrier between us, I cannot lift it.”

He released her. “There could be but one. – I believe that you are truthful; is the barrier another man?”

Another man? She hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

He looked at her. “I don’t believe you! You are lying for some purpose of your own. See here, Eve, I don’t want to be played with in this way; you love me, and I worship you; by this time next week you are to be my wife.”

“I must go away from you, then? You won’t help me? Where can I go!” She left him; she walked slowly towards the lake, her head bowed.

He followed her. He had paid no attention to what she was saying; “feminine complications” – this was all he thought. He was very masterful with women.

As he came up she turned her head and looked at him. And, by a sort of inspiration, he divined that the look was a farewell. He caught her, and none too soon, for, as he touched her, he felt the impulse, the first forward movement of the spring which would have taken her over the edge, down to the deep water below.

Carrying her in his arms, close against his breast, he hastened away from the edge; he went inland for a long distance. Then he stopped, releasing her. He was extremely pale.

“I believe you now,” he said. “All shall be as you like – just as you like; I will do anything you wish me to do.” He seemed to be still afraid, he watched her anxiously.

She came and put her hands on his shoulders; she lifted her head and kissed his cheek. It was like the kiss one gives in the chamber of death.

He did not move, he was holding himself in strict control. But he felt the misery of her greeting so acutely that moisture rose in his eyes.

She saw it. “Don’t be troubled about me,” she said. “I didn’t want to die – really, I didn’t want to at all. It was only because just at that moment I could not bear it to have you keep asking me when it was impossible, – I felt that I must go away; and apart from you, and Cicely and baby, there seemed no place in the world for me! But now – now I want to live. Perhaps we shall both live long lives.”

“I’m not a woman, you know,” said Paul, with a faint smile. “Women do with make-believes; men can’t.”

She had left him. “Go now,” she said.

He turned to obey. Then he came back. “Eve, can’t you tell me your real reason?”

But her face changed so quickly to its old look of agony that he felt a pang of regret that he had spoken. “I will never ask you again,” he said.

This was the offering he made her – a great one for Paul Tennant. He went away.

An hour later she came back to the camp.

“Paul has gone to Potterpins,” said Hollis, who was sitting by the fire. “Told me to give you this.” He handed her a note.

It contained but two lines: “I shall come back next week. But send a note by mail; I want to know if you are contented with me.”

Eve wrote but one word – “Yes.”

XXV

PAUL remained away for ten days; not by his own wish, but detained by business.

During his absence Hollis’s services were in demand. Cicely was now able to go out on the lake, and he took her for an hour or two every morning in one of the larger canoes; the nurse and Cicely sat at the bow, then came Porley and Jack, then Eve, then Hollis. Cicely still did not talk, she had not again asked for her grandfather; but she looked at the water and the woods on the shore, and her face showed occasionally some slight childish interest in what was passing. Eve, too, scarcely spoke; but it was pleasure enough for poor Hollis to be opposite to her, where he could see her without appearing to gaze too steadily. He had always admired her; he had admired her voice, her reticent, independent way; he had admired her tall, slender figure, with the broad sweep of the shoulders, the erect carriage, and lithe, strong step. He had never thought her too cold, too pale; but now in the increased life and color which had come to her she seemed to him a daughter of the gods – the strong Northern gods with flaxen hair; the flush in her cheeks made her eyes bluer and her hair more golden; the curve of her lips, a curve which had once been almost sullen, was now strangely sweet. Her love had made her beautiful; her love, too, made her kind to Hollis; – women are often unconsciously cruel in this way. The poor auctioneer lived in a fool’s paradise and forgot all his cautions; day-dreams began to visit him, he was a boy again.

On the eleventh day Paul returned.

Hollis happened to see him meet Eve. Outwardly it was simply that they shook hands, and stood for a moment exchanging an unimportant question or two; or rather Paul asked, and Eve answered; but Paul’s tone was not what it once had been, his eyes, looking at Eve, were different. It was one thing to know that she loved Paul, Hollis was used to that; it was another to know that Paul loved her. He watched through the day, with all the acuteness of jealousy, discovering nothing. But that evening, when Eve had said good-night and started towards her lodge, Paul rose and followed her.

“I guess I’ll go down to the lake for a moment or two,” Hollis said to the judge, who was sitting by the fire. He walked away in the direction of the lake; then, doubling upon his track, he returned, avoiding the fire and going towards the row of lodges. Presently he saw two dusky figures, a man and a woman; they stood there for a moment; then the man bent his head and touched with his lips the woman’s wrist. It was but for a second; they separated, she going towards her lodge, and he returning to the fire. The watcher in the wood stole noiselessly down to the beach and got out a canoe; then he went off and woke an Indian. Presently the two were paddling westward over the dark lake. They caught the steamer. Hollis reached Port aux Pins the following evening.

From the boat he went to a restaurant and ordered dinner; he called it “dinner” to make it appear more fine. He ordered the best that the establishment could offer. He complained because there were no anchovies. He said to the waiter: “This patty de fograr? – You must be sick! Take away these off-color peaches and bring me something first class. Bring lick-koors, too; can you catch on to that?” He drank a great deal of wine, finishing with champagne; then he lit a cigar and sauntered out.

He went to a beer-garden. The place was brightly lighted; dusty evergreens planted in tubs made foliage; little tables were standing in the sand; there was a stage upon which four men, in Tyrolese costume, were singing, “O Strassburg, du wunderschöne Stadt!” very well, accompanied by a small orchestra.

“Hello, Katty, wie geht’s?” said Hollis to a girl who was passing with a tray of empty beer-glasses. She stopped. “Want some ice-cream, Katty?”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Hollis, you know there’s no ice-cream here.”

“Did I say here? Outside, of course. Come along.”

Katty went, nothing loath.

She was a girl of sixteen, with bright eyes, thick braids of brown hair, and a sweet voice; the fairness of extreme youth gave her a fictitious innocence. He took her to the ephemeral saloon, and sat looking at her while she devoured two large slabs of a violently pink tint; her preposterous Gainsborough hat, with its imitation plumes, she had taken off, and the flaring gas-light shone on her pretty face.

“Now shall we have a walk, Katty?”

They strolled through the streets for half an hour. He took her into a jeweller’s shop, and bought her a German-silver dog-collar which she had admired in the window; she wanted it to clasp round her throat: “Close up, you know, under the chin; it’s so cute that way.” She was profuse in her thanks; of her own accord, when they came out, she took his arm.

He fell into silence. They passed his rooms; Katty looked up. “All dark,” she said.

“Yes. I guess I’ll take you back now, Katty; do you want to go home, or to the garden again?”

“I ain’t accustomed to going to bed at this early hour, Mr. Hollis, whatever you may be. I’ll go back to the gardens, please.”

When they reached the entrance, he put his hand in his pocket and drew something out. “There, Katty, take that and buy more dog-collars. Money’s all an old fellow like me is good for.”

“Oh, Mr. Hollis, – when I like you better than many that’s young.”

“Thank you, Katty. Good-night.”

He went, as he would have called it, “home.” On the way he passed his office; a vague impulse made him unlock the door, and look in, by the light of a match. The skeleton was there, and the bonnets in their bandboxes. “I must try to work ’em off before winter,” he thought; “they are really elegant.” He locked the door again, and, going a little farther down the street, he entered an open hallway, and began to climb a long flight of stairs. On the second floor he inserted his key in a door, and, opening, entered; he was at home. The air was close and hot, and he threw up the windows; leaving the candle in the outer room, he went and sat down in his parlor, crossing his legs, and trying to lean back; every chair in the room was in its very nature and shape uncomfortable. Sitting there, his life in retrospect passed slowly before him, like a picture unrolling itself on the dark wall; he saw all the squalid poverty of it, all its disappointments, its deprivations. “From first to last it’s been a poor affair; I wonder how I’ve stood it!” The dawn came into the room, he did not move; he sat there with his hat on until the little bell of the Baptist church near by began to ring for Sabbath-school. He listened to the sound for a while, it was persistent; finally he got up; his legs felt stiff, he brushed some dust from his trousers with the palm of his hand; then he went out.

He went down to the street, and thence to the Baptist church. The door stood open, and he went in; the children were already in their places, and the organ was sounding forth a lively tune; presently the young voices began all together in a chorus,

“The voice of free grace cries escape to the mount-ins– ”

His mother used to sing that song, he remembered. She often sang it over her work, and she was always at work – yes, to the very day of her death; she was a patient, silent creature.

“I don’t know that I’d oughter have less pluck than she had,” thought her son.

“Brother, will you have a book?” whispered a little man in a duster, proffering one from behind.

Hollis took it, and followed the words as the children sang them to the end. When the prayer began, he laid the book down carefully on the seat, and went out on tiptoe. He went down to the pier; the westward bound boat had just come in; he went on board.

“Business,” he explained to the judge, when he reached the camp. “Had to go.”

“Sold the skeleton, perhaps?”

“Well, I’ve laid one!” responded Hollis, grimly.

The judge was in gay spirits, Cicely had been talking to him; it had been about Jack, and she had said nothing of importance; but the sentences had been rational, connected.

Several days passed, and the improvement continued; consciousness had returned to her eyes, they all felt hopeful. They had strolled down to the beach one evening to see the sunset, and watch the first flash of Jupiter Light out on its reef. Eve was with Hollis; she selected him each day as her companion, asking him in so many words to accompany her; Hollis went, showering out jokes and puns. Now and then he varied his efforts at entertainment by legends of what he called “old times on the frontier.” They always began: “My father lived on a flat-boat. He was a bold and adventurous character.” In reality, his father was a teacher of singing, who earned his living (sometimes) by getting up among school-children, who co-operated without pay, a fairy operetta called The Queen of the Flowers; he was an amiable man with a mild tenor voice; he finally became a colporteur for the Methodist Book Concern. To-day Hollis was talking about the flat-boat – maundering on, as he would himself have called it; Paul and the judge strolled to and fro. The water came up smoothly in long, low swells, whose edge broke at their feet with a little sound like “whisssh,” followed by a retreating gurgle.

“Paul Tennant, are you there?” asked a voice.

Startled, they turned. On the bank above the beach, and therefore just above their heads (the bank was eight feet high), stood Cicely.

“It is you I want, Paul Tennant. Everything has come back to me; I know now that Ferdie is dead. You would not let me go to him; probably he thought that it was because I did not want to go. This I owe to you, and I curse you for it. I curse you, Paul Tennant, I curse your days and nights; all the things and people you like, all your hopes and plans. If you trust any one, I hope that person will betray you; if you love any one, I hope that person will hate you; if you should have any children, I hope they will be disobedient, and, whatever they may be to others, undutiful to you.”

“Cicely, stop!” cried Eve. “Will no one stop her?”

“God, curse Paul Tennant. He has been so cruel!” She was now kneeling down, her arms held up to heaven in appeal.

The judge looked waxily pallid; Hollis did not move; Paul, much less disturbed than any one, was already climbing the bank. It was perpendicular, and there was neither footing nor hold, but after one or two efforts he succeeded. When he reached the top, however, Cicely was gone. He went to her lodge; here he found her sitting quietly beside Jack’s bed; she was alone, neither the nurse nor Porley was with her. Before he could speak, Eve appeared, breathless.

“Where is the nurse, Cicely?” Paul asked, in his usual tone.

“Do you mean that woman whom you have put over me? She has gone for a walk.”

“And Porley?”

“You will find Porley at the big pine.”

“What is she doing there?”

“I didn’t want her about, so I tied her to the trunk,” Cicely answered. “Probably she is frightened,” she added, calmly.

“Go and find her,” said Eve to Paul. “I will stay here.”

“Have nothing to do with Paul Tennant, Eve,” Cicely remarked. “He is almost a murderer. He didn’t go to his brother; he let him die alone.”

“I shall not leave you,” said Paul, looking at Eve’s white cheeks.

“Have you fallen in love with each other?” asked Cicely. “It needed only that.”

“I beg you to go,” Eve entreated.

Paul hesitated. “Will you promise not to leave this lodge until I come back?”

“Yes.”

Paul went out. As he did so, he saw the judge approaching, leaning heavily on Hollis’s arm.

“It’s nothing,” Hollis explained. “The judge, he’s only tuckered out; a night’s rest is all he needs.”

“Take me to Cicely,” the judge commanded.

“Cicely ought to be quiet now,” Paul answered in a decided voice. “Eve is with her, and they’re all right; women do better alone together, you know, when one of them has hysteria.”

“Hysteria! Is that what you called it?” said the judge.

“Of course. And it’s natural,” Paul went on: – “poor little girl, coming to herself suddenly here in the woods, only to realize that her husband is dead. We shall have to be doubly tender with her, now that she is beginning to be herself again.”

“You didn’t mind it, then?” pursued the judge. He was relieved, of course – glad. Still it began to seem almost an impertinence that Paul should have paid so little attention to what had been to the rest of them so terrible.

“Mind? Do you mean what she was saying? I didn’t half hear it, I was thinking how I could get up that bank. And that reminds me there’s something wrong with Porley; she’s at the big pine. I am going out there to see. Cicely told me that she had tied her in some way.”

“If she did, the wench richly deserved it,” said the judge, going towards his lodge, his step stiff and slow.

“He came mighty near a stroke,” said Hollis to Paul in an undertone.

“Hadn’t you better go with him, then?”

“Oh yes; I’ll go.” He went towards the judge’s lodge. “You go right into that lodge, fool Hollis, and stay there, – stay with that unreasonable, vituperative, cantankerous old Bourbon of a judge, and – judge of Bourbon! You smooth him down, and you hearten him up, you agree with him every time; you tuck him in, you hang his old clothes over a chair, you take his shoes out, and black ’em; and you conduct yourself generally like one of his own nigs in the glorious old days of slavery – Maryland, my Maryland!” He lifted the latch of the door, and went in.

Paul, meanwhile, had gone to the big pine; when he reached it, the twilight had darkened into night. A crouching figure stood close to the trunk – Porley; she was tied by a small rope to the tree, the firm ligatures encircling her in three places – at the throat, the waist, and the ankles; in addition, her hands were tied behind her.

“Well, Porley, a good joke, isn’t it?” Paul said, as he cut the knots of the rope with his knife.

“Ah-hoo!” sobbed the girl, her fright breaking into audible expression now that aid was near.

“Mrs. Morrison thought she would see how brave you were.”

“Ah-hoo! Ah-hoo-hoo-hoo!” roared Porley, in a paroxysm of frantic weeping.

“If you are so frightened as that, what did you let her do it for? You are five times as strong as she is.”

“I coulden tech her, marse – I coulden! Says she, ‘A-follerin’ an’ spyin’, Porley? Take dat rope an’ come wid me. ’ So I come. She’s cunjud me, marse; I is done fer.”

“Nonsense! Where’s the nurse?”

“I doan know – I doan know. Says she, ‘We’ll take a walk, Miss Mile.’ An’ off dey went, ’way ober dat way. Reckon Miss Mile’s dead!”

“No more dead than you are. Go back to the camp and un-cunjer yourself; there’s a dollar to help it along.”

He went off in the direction she had indicated. After a while he began to call at intervals; there was a distant answer, and he called again. And then gradually, nearer and nearer, came the self-respecting voice of Mary Ann Mile. Each time he shouted, “Hello there!” her answer was, “Yes, sir; present-lée,” in a very well-educated tone.

“What is this, Mrs. Mile?”

“You may well ask, sir. Such an incident has never happened to me before. Mrs. Morrison remarked that she should enjoy a walk, and I therefore went with her; after we had proceeded some distance, suddenly she darted off. I followed her, and kept her in sight for a while, or rather she kept me in sight; then she disappeared, and I perceived not only that I had lost her, but that I myself was lost. It is a curious thing, sir, – the cleverness of people whose minds are disordered!”