# The Beloved Pawn (Everybody's Magazine 1922-23)/Part 4

Extracted from Everybody's Magazine Feb. 1923, pp. 61-86.

### PART IV

   Nemesis in Strange Guise Overtakes the King of Garden Island and Eve Finds the Tragedies Which Battered at Her Heart Gone Like a Disturbing Dream
Begin this serial with any instalment. The story is here up to this issue.
WHEN Eve Eldred fled in the dark night from High Island and—as she supposed—the brutality of David MacKinnon, the whole structure of faith she had reared in a few eventful days crumbled away. The coming of David to Garden Island, one of the Beaver group in Lake Michigan, where he sought shelter for his trading hooker from a storm, meant that the lonely girl had at last found a friend. Years she had lived there with her father, “King Norman” Eldred, surrounded only by rough men—“the scum of the lakes,” who help him in his fishing industry. For these men she had only fear, as her father had taught her.
But David had come to the very spot he had been warned to keep away from, where his father had been treacherously lured to his death by Eldred, who was jealous of the affection Eve showed the kindly man. And so with the son—Eldred would not tolerate his presence. So he set fire to his hooker—and under such circumstances that David believed Eve assisted him in the dastardly act. And then, when the girl continued to show her liking for the young fellow, Eldred in rage cast her out, and David took her over to neighboring High Island—away, as she had begged him to—where he kept her prisoner but treated her with all chivalry, in revenge upon Eldred.
The latter, repenting and wanting his daughter back, had gone to the island, but MacKinnon, instead of treating with him, drove him away. Also to the island had gone Jean Mosseau, a French-Canadian, who wanted to kidnap Eve, and it was he, not David, who had tried to seize her in the darkness.
Eve knew where to go. In an open boat she pulled for the light on Squaw Island, where dwelt Ned Borden, the keeper, and his wife and assistant, “Aunt Jen.” For some reason which Eve could not fathom, the woman had evinced a strange interest in her, and with Aunt Jen the girl knew she would be safe.
Jen Borden's watch began at six that evening, and at five o'clock Ned had put fire under the boilers because the weather was thickening. True, it might lift, but Borden had burned many a ton of government coal to make steam that was never used in his years of service—better that than to be even a few minutes late with his fog-whistle, when those minutes might mean the risk of ships and the lives in them. But by the time the watch changed, this preparation was justified, because rain and mist cloaked objects two hundred yards away.
Her hair drawn close over her head and tied in one large knot at her nape, wearing a denim jumper, an old gingham skirt and large, broken shoes, Jen shoveled coal into the fire, and the light from the open door showed her face set in a look of absorption not, it was evident, wholly concerned with her work.
The woman's mind was never far from her work, to be sure, because, when she slammed the door of the fire-box, she went outside and looked first at the light, its steady red beam accentuated every fifteen seconds by a flash of brilliant crimson, and then off to the northward, where ships, passing to or from the straits, would need that beacon. On the wall of the boiler-house a clock ticked and a small lever functioned to send the velvety bass voice of the fog-whistle in a five-second bellow down the wind to warn those mariners who could not see the light in this murk; silence for twenty seconds, except for wind and rain and the surf running on the gravel; another blast, then silence for twice the former period.
Nothing was in sight on the lake, though she strained her eyes to see. A light burned in the keeper's dwelling, where Ned lay sleeping. Jen watched is a moment, and then turned back to the boiler, closed the door and sat down in a wooden chair.
“Oh dear!” she murmured. “I'm glad it's thick. Sewing's a poor excuse for needful work when a body's head's as full as mine.”
She sighed again and, though she sat still in the chair, her hands fidgeted slowly.
Monday night she had been at her sewing-machine until morning, and Tuesday, following her return from High Island, she had driven it steadily. Afterward she slept restlessly, but again last night it was very late when the hum of the speeding needle left off, and now, but for the necessity of firing the boiler, she would have been fashioning garments from her stock of plain cloth for the relief it gave her.
In these days, her manner with her husband had been changed. She did not bluster, and her usual volubility was missing. She was gentle, almost meek at times, and always she went about half abstracted, with her mind on some other matter than that which occupied her. She had given Ned a rather sketchy account of her visit to Eve, and after that seemed as eager to avoid the subject as she had been to make the trip to the girl.
When she was not with Ned, though, he was much in her mind—at her work about the light, when she performed her household duties and, especially, when she bent over her sewing-machine, she was occupied with thought of him.
“I'll tell him—I'll be blistered if I won't tell him!” she said again and again. The first time that she gave words to such a resolve was when she set the supply-boat on its course home from High Island. But her determination waned when she approached the landing, only to gain strength again when the first opporutnity for confiding the thing she dreaded to reveal had come and passed. “I'll tell him!” she promised the sewing-machine later—but she did not. “Oh, you cowardly heart!” she moaned, when still another opportunity had passed. “Oh, you white-livered old liar! One more chance—just one!” But no revelation was made when that desired chance did arrive.
And now as she sat with an eye on the steam-gage and an ear for any sounds that might come from the lake, she was living it all again—her failure to speak when she was so strongly impelled to unburden herself; her scene with the girl and, lastly, the words of Norman Eldred spoken that night in his house recurred again and again: “You have told him about our little transaction? He knows?”
She rose and paced nervously, finally slicing her fire with savage thrusts of the bar.
THE hands of the clock swung on toward that point where her husband would relieve her of duty. Ten o'clock passed, and eleven. At regular intervals she looked out at the light and at the lake, and once she timed the blasts of the whistle, to be certain that the mechanism functioned properly. Eleven-thirty now. A half-hour more, and then sleep—if she could find the peace of mind to close her eyes.
She stepped outside again. The light in her husband's room was brighter, and she could see him moving about as he dressed. She looked out across the lake, straining her eyes, and then stared at the near water. She started forward, with her lips shaping an unspoken exclamation of amazement.
A boat was approaching the landing—a small craft, an open boat. Shaken from her own distress by this suggestion of mishap and need, she hurried down the beach, heedless of the rain.
There was but one figure in the boat. She heard the oars thump and rattle as they were shipped, saw the occupant crawl out on the landing, and then she was close, breaking into a run, crying out:
“Dearie! Dearie!” Eve Eldred stood there, her face very white in the darkness. “What's the matter?” asked Jen in a strained voice, grasping the girl's wet hands.
Eve swayed a trifle, as though dizzy.
“For a little while,” she said weakly, “I thought there was no place to come. And then I remembered——”
She crept then into the woman's eager arms, and Jen breathed,
“Something terrible's happened—and, dearie, you've come home!”
Before the boiler, where her clothing could dry and where the chill of wind and rain and fright could be driven from her bones. Eve told her story. Not all of it—not everything that had happened—but enough so that Jen could guess what had taken place on High Island that night and could be sure what had happened in the girl's heart.
Eve found herself to be peculiarly reticent. All the way up, through all those hours on the lake when she had had strength only to hold the skiff on its course and let wind and current bear her toward this safety, her breast had been bursting for the relief of pouring her story into this woman's ears. But now her throat was stiff and unwieldy, and the words she wanted most to say would not come. She stumbled through the story of what had happened, and it was not until she reached that part which had to do with her father, his offer to MacKinnon, the impending fact of her return to Garden Island, that she could talk clearly and evenly. That was terror, real and to be faced, not something which was gone, irretrievably lost, and though this sanctuary might endure for only a few hours, it was something to be valued beyond price.
“But I had to come—I had to come here first, even if it makes going back worse than ever!”
She had just spoken that sentence when the door opened and Ned Borden stepped in. He stopped in surprise, and Eve felt Aunt Jen, who stood close to her, shudder. The pause was long enough to indicate to the girl that her coming meant something to those two people of which she was not aware—the pause and the look on the man's face, and that shudder of the woman. But Jen was the first to speak.
“Ned, the Lord's sent this girl to us to escape the devil and a passel of his works.”
The keeper looked at her searchingly for a moment, and Jen caught her breath. Then he smiled gravely and said:
“There's worse places, I guess. Glad you're here”—to Eve. “What's ours belongs to those who need it.”
He repressed his curiosity about the reason and manner of this coming; but that was easy—he had become accustomed to holding back questions in these weeks.
When the women had gone, and after he had looked at the gage and water-glass, he stood a moment as though listening for an expected sound; then he shook his head and compressed his lips patiently.
REFRESHED by the sleep into which Jen Borden had coaxed her, Eve woke to the warm spring day and dressed and, knowing from the silence of the dwelling that the woman to whom she had come still slumbered, she went outside, and stood a moment on the steps, watching a boat which was heading toward the landing.
She recognized it, of course, and after a moment turned sharply, as though she would slip back into the house and hide. The mood which would prompt hiding was on her well enough, evidenced by a drooping of the mouth, a frightened look in her eyes, but the impulse to run away passed, and a slow flush came into her cheeks and her eyes were not pleasant.
David saw her from a distance and did not wait for the Islander to be made fast before leaping ashore and striding up the path. She was waiting for him half-way between the light and the beach.
“Eve! You're here—all right—safe!”
He had one hand extended for hers, but checked his swift approach when she turned from him with something like a shudder, and the hand went slowly back to his side.
“Why, Eve, what is it?”
She looked at him squarely, and he had every opportunity to see the scorn in her eyes.
“What did you come here for?” she asked.
“For you, of course. Why else, Eve?”
“Then you'd better go,” she said, with a half-laugh. “I might have known I should believe you when you told me about yourself over and over again.” Her voice was hard as she steeled herself for this, but when she stopped she compressed her lips and breathed deeply, as though her voice was made even and firm only by great effort. “I didn't believe you when you said 1 was in danger. I was a fool——”
“Eve, look here!”
She backed a sharp step or two to keep distance between them as he advanced.
“Don't come near me!” she cried. “Don't ever come near me again! I don't ever want to hear your voice. I don't ever want to see your face. I don't even want to think about you, because, if I do—I'll be sorry I threw that knife away that night.”
Her voice pitched up and thinned out on that, and with one scorching look at him—a look which, closely analyzed, carried as well a beseeching quality—she turned and fled for the house.
Until she gained the doorway, David stood dumfounded; then he called her name sharply, with something like desperation, and began pursuit, mounting to the porch with a bound and flinging himself against the door which Eve had slammed behind her. He called again and rapped savagely and started forward eagerly when the door was opened—and stopped abruptly, because Jen Borden stood facing him.
The woman had watched what happened through a window, had come down the stairs just as Eve burst into the house and now confronted MacKinnon—a ludicrous figure in her flowered kimono and lace boudoir-cap; yet there was nothing grotesque in her face, and the quality of its expression would have made even a disinterested observer forgetful of her morning get-up. It was very grave, with an under-shading of sorry accusation; no anger was there, because her regret for this happening was too pronounced to leave room for anger at the moment. But it did not need anger to stop David, for he could read in the woman's face evidence of great distress, and that was enough. Jen was the first to speak.
“Oh, don't make it any worse, boy,” she said; “don't make it worse.” Her voice was low and tender and appealing.
“There's somethin' wrong here,” David said tersely. “I've got to see Eve and get it straightened, so——”
“It's all straight,” Jen answered, shaking her head slowly. “It's all straight enough so's her mind's made up. If there's any pity in your heart, boy, go away and leave her be. She's been through enough with you now; her heart's broke, and the only way to mend it is to help her forget. She can't do that if you're around.”
That gentleness, her slow speech—such good evidence of assurance—stripped David of the ability to think, let alone retort. He stood there striving to rally his wits, and the woman went on:
“I thought when I first heard you had her there that it'd be all right, mebbe; I thought that after I went to see her, too, and that's why I blame myself for not bringing her back. Oh, son, I guess you don't know much about a girl's heart; I guess you don't understand that there's times and places for everything. I'm sorry. I liked you; and I can't do that any more. There ain't any time to argue now. I've got my hands full trying to make this girl's heart well after what you've done. You'll have to go, boy; you'll have to go.”
He was hardly conscious that she had closed the door gently, shutting him out without a chance for reply. And yet, given the chance, what would he have said? What had he done to Eve? What was this terrible thing he had brought upon her? For it must be terrible—else that woman would never have looked like that.
He found himself walking slowly down the path to the dock, and when, once aboard his boat and under way again, he reached to drag a stool so he might sit as he wheeled, his movements were those of a man who is very weary, whose heart is gone.
ELDRED had watched David go into the darkness of the night before with anger in his eyes, but after a moment a sort of elation came to replace it. However, when he was sure he was alone with Mosseau, he turned savagely on the man.
“You're a fool,” he said heavily, “as great a fool as he is, Mosseau.” The Frenchman shrugged. “You understand what's happened? She's gone—somewhere. He'd thought she was here for sure if you'd kept your head. Ah, you're a fool in a world of fools!”
He said that last after advancing and standing over the other, who was badly frightened by the outburst and cringed when Eldred flung out a hand in gesture, as though he would strike. But he did not strike—just retained his tense pose for a moment and then turned away.
“Not here; not with him—there's but one place,” he said, as if to himself, and repeated, “one place. You'll go down with the crew,” he went on, as if mentioning a minor matter, “and you won't leave this island. You're a fool, but maybe I'll have use even for a fool.”
At sunrise, Eldred took the road that led down the island, walking briskly, and in an hour came out on the beach. He could see the Islander well over toward the light, and as he stood focusing his glass, he said in a whisper,
“But for the fool, he'd not have——”
He stood there while the distant boat landed, and held his glass steadily in the one position until she was clear again. He had seen one figure go up toward the tower, had seen it return alone; no other had boarded David's boat, he believed. For a moment he experienced relief, and this was followed by a new misgiving. Had he been wrong, after all? Had he been wrong? Was there another place to which Eve might have gone?
And thereafter, during many of the daylight hours, Norman Eldred patrolled that beach, glass in hand, and for long intervals he would stand motionless, with the instrument leveled on Squaw Island, watching for boats to arrive or depart. And Dimmock, from the pilot-house of his tug, watched, too, as he went back and forth on the business of fishing. But the red-haired ruffian had nothing to report and Eldred had nothing to show for his pains.
It was not until the afternoon of the third day that he was rewarded. Then he saw the lighthouse supply-boat go into the water, and strained his eyes to see figures aboard. Two only—just two; and both of them men, he could make out. He watched the boat until it was nearly abreast of him, and then took his way back to the head of the island, hastening through the woods.
“WELL, we're alone!” Aunt Jen spoke these words to Eve as though the condition were a relief. She had waved a farewell to her husband and Pete from the landing, and walked back to the dwelling, where Eve sat on the steps, chin in hands. The girl smiled ever so faintly as the woman stood looking down at her. Then Jen sat down.
“Why can't you let me help you, dearie?”
Eve shook her head slowly.
“I don't know.”
“Don't know! You mean you don't want to talk? For three days you've been trying your best to keep it to yourself, but it ain't going to work, dearie. Bottling it up's the worst thing you can do. Is it your father that worries you so?”
A moment of deliberation. Then,
“Yes.”
Jen eyed her skeptically and sniffed.
“He comes second, don't he?”
Eve lowered her head, and her assent was little more than a whisper.
“Looky here, dearie; the Lord didn't give women a tongue for nothing; he didn't give ears to folks who understand the trouble of others for nothing, either. You ain't got any cause to worry about your father now that you're here—safe with us. Just you forget him—or leave him to me.” She took Eve's hand in hers and the girl turned a slow gaze to her face. “It's him that makes you this way, ain't it?” Jen urged.
Eve nodded.
“Yes”—lowly. “You see, I can't forget it. I've tried—for three days, but I can't. And I want to so!” She drew an unsteady breath. “I'd been hoping so much! I'd been watching and waiting and trying to see happiness through it all, just as you told me to. I almost thought I saw it; I was so sure of it that last day. And then——”
A shudder traveled her body and she sat erect, the hand that Jen held working nervously. The wall of reserve with which she had penned up the hurt in her heart was breaking; her breath became uneven before the surge that swept through her, up from her very soul to her lips, and words tumbled out, relieving words, hurting while they came, perhaps, but draining the wound of the poison which silence and brooding had let accumulate.
“It had been a nightmare with my father; nothing could have been much worse except what I thought when David took me away that night. But he treated me as nobody had ever treated me; he was different.
“I couldn't blame him for wanting to sell me back to my father when he thought that I'd—helped burn his boat. But I hadn't expected it, and something seemed to break inside me. I'd been so almost happy there. I didn't want to go back to Garden Island; it seemed that I never could go back, and I said things that I felt, I guess—” Her voice was flat and dry and she paused a moment. “I don't remember just what I said, but I guess I told him that I—that I cared for him; and when I said that—” She broke off short and shook her head. “I can't explain it. A look came into his face that scared me, and I wanted to get away from him. It was—like fire in his eyes, and when he began to talk, it scared me worse. I didn't want him to talk that way—savage, as if he did want to hurt me.
“He said that doors and locks wouldn't stop him. And then that whistle blew and he went out, and—you see”—spreading a hand and frowning—“he must have been afraid of doors and locks after all; he must have wanted to get me out of that room that he told me once was a safe place. He must have waited, and when I ran out, he——”
She stopped abruptly again and laughed and disengaged the hand which Jen held and smoothed hair that did not need attention.
“It isn't so much David,” she said in a voice that shook. “It's in here, in my heart! I was almost happy there. I'd fooled myself and dreamed and built up a lot of hopes—and now I haven't any, except that I won't have to go back to my father.”
Jen's face worked.
“There, there, dearie! You won't have to—leave that to your Aunt Jen. Blast that trader's heart, anyhow! I'd like to have him here to listen to a piece of my mind. If he can know when I'm thinking of him, I'll bet his ears are frizzling up like bacon in a pan. You forget him—or leave him to me. You just chuck him out of your mind, dearie.”
Eve shook her head. There was the rub. She could no more put MacKinnon out of her mind than she could control the functioning of her heart-muscles. He was in her consciousness every moment, an exalted being on the one side, tender and gentle and chivalrous, and close against that impression was the other—of the destroyer in whom she had placed her faith to have it shattered. She had had a glimpse of happiness, and for a brief period she had been able to look back on Garden Island as a disturbing dream only, had been able to put out of her mind the danger of being dragged there again by her father, but with the disruption of her dream of the future, the possibility of a return to her father's house loomed large—so large that she could see nothing else before her.
And this was in her mind when Jen led her into the house, dragged out a trunk and began tossing from it a great array of out-of-date clothing.
“Now, here's that blue taffeta. I wore it twice in Oswego and put it on once more, but never got out of the house. That's every blessed time it was on a body's back since I snatched the basting threads. You'd look fine in that shade of blue, dearie. I can cut down the neck and drape the skirt, and take the sleeves off at the elbow— You got lovely arms, dearie—and I got a real swell pearl buckle for a belt. These here linen suits, too, 'll make over into nice summer dresses for you, and that black satin. My! How that'll set off your eyes, and Up-to-Date's got a smart pattern that made me think of you when I seen it.”
She rummaged again.
“Then, come fall, you might just's well use this broadcloth suit. There ain't a spot or a worn place on it”—hanging the skirt over her arm and taking it to the light. “Guess there ain't many girls on the Beavers who'll look any smarter 'n you when I get done with this!”
But to none of this did Eve respond. She had sunk back into the silence which had endured since her coming to the light except for that brief interval this afternoon when she had talked, and then she talked only to give voice to her hopelessness.
FOR three days the older woman had tried to distract the girl's attention and rouse her spirits, but her resources had been taxed without result. She knew the twin tragedies which had battered at Eve's heart—the loss of her faith in MacKinnon, the fear of a return to Garden Island. But nothing that she could say or do would mitigate them or take the forlorn look from the girl's face. She accepted Eve's report of what had happened that last night on High Island without question and, viewing it so, of course there was nothing she could do but condemn David. And she knew the real menace of Norman Eldred to the girl, knew it, perhaps, better than Eve did, knew it from more angles, had known it longer, and it was that which made her assurances of prolonged sanctuary weak and unconvincing and which set trouble prominently in her keen gray eyes.
Now she settled herself to ripping up the blue taffeta while Eve stared across the steel-gray lake, splashed with silver here and there as lightly screened sunlight filtered through the soggy, broken clouds. Without design or intent, reminded by some small detail, Aunt Jen began telling a tale of the lighthouse service, of that terrible night when, blinded by snow, a big ore-vessel bashed her nose on the reef and hung there, wave-swept, breaking up, and of how Ned Borden had held her in his arms before he stepped into the tiny supply-boat and put out into the lather of surf to pick up a line among the rocks which the distressed craft had tried to get to shore. He achieved the impossible, brought in the line, established a breeches-buoy and got the crew to safety just as the texas began to crumble.
She grew animated as she relived these scenes, and, without knowing it, she had caught Eve's interest. The girl watched the woman as she talked, sketching in those tragic moments with such simple words, and was quite lifted above her own distress by the narrative. Jen went on to tell of that helpless day when they watched a tow of two barges break loose and go past them to certain destruction, helpless to do more than pray. She told of other times as thrilling, and always it was with modesty, accepting duty as a matter of course, without heroics, teaching in parables the gospel of service. That was the kernel of her narratives—service, without cant or pretense, and there was a sincerity in it that did for Eve what coaxing and more conscious attempts at diversion had failed to do.
The girl began to ask questions and Jen's heart glowed, and then she stopped talking as Eve rose with a light gasp.
“The Elsa!” she whispered.
Jen stood up and peered through a window which gave a view of the landing.
Eldred's steam-tug was checking down, and King Norman himself stood beside the pilot-house, a line in his hands.
“Well, he's come,” said Eve dryly.
For a moment the older woman did not reply, and upon them both was the silence of impending tragedy. Jen Borden was crushed, confused, bewildered, but through this swirl of broken thought and changing emotion came her own words of the early afternoon: “You forget him—or leave him to me.”
Was she merely a talker? Was the safety which she could offer reduced to mouthings? Was she— She heard herself saying,
“He's come sure enough, but scorch me if he ain't going to put about, too!” She flung aside the cloth, dropped her shears with a clatter. “Here, dearie—this way!”
HALF dragging, half shoving Eve, the woman opened the door that led into the tower, slammed and locked it and slipped the key into her apron pocket. She heard Eve's one stifled cry; she stepped to the window and looked out. Eldred was walking toward her, searching the house with intent eyes.
“O Lord, give me strength to meet this devil!” prayed Jen, as his feet sounded on the steps.
She did not wait for his rap but flung the door wide and stood squarely in his way, glowering. Eldred came to a halt with a faint suggestion of a derisive bow.
“Well?” she challenged.
“You know why I'm here,” he said.
There was in the confidence of that statement something strained, a note that roused suspicion in the woman, who was now alive and alert, every faculty in acute accord with her purpose.
“Oh, I know, do I, Lasker? You give me credit for mind-reading. All I can tell you is that it's no good purpose that's brought you.”
“But you've expected me.”
“Huh! I'd as soon 'ave expected leprosy and been about as joyful over it.”
He eyed her a moment, trying to probe through her bluster.
“I've come for the only thing that would bring me here—for Eve.”
“For Eve?” Her amazement was well feigned, and she saw that it balked him. “What makes you come here, Lasker? I'd heard she was gone, and that the trader stole her. Lord knows what's happened since!
“She's left High Island,” he said evenly. “She left there and you gave her shelter. he's been here three days, and now I've come for her—when you're alone.”
“Three days?”—sarcastically. “Lasker, if——”
“Eldred!” he broke in. “Eldred, or I'll——”
“You're in fine shape to threaten anybody, ain't you?” She bristled. “Here you come to me for help and start in by making threats. That ain't any way to get advice.”
“No advice! I came for something real.” He moved closer. Jen held her ground, giving him stare for stare. “Do you tell me she's not here?”
“If she was here, do you think I'd be facing you this way? Lasker, if she ever comes into these old arms again, they'll her this time—hold her tight. They won't let her go—not for hell itself!”
Her voice had risen, but it did not impress the man, because something like a tolerant smile crossed his face.
“You'd be amusing,” he said, “amusing, Jenny, if you weren't standing in my way. I'm sort of starved for her, and a hungry man”—with a slight gesture—“is in no mood for talk.”
“Then you'd better be making tracks out of here. Talk's all you'll get, King Norman, and blessed little more of that!”
This time, no smile crossed his face, but a whip of anger.
“Don't trifle! I give you that warning—the nearest to a friendly act you'll ever have from me.” He put one hand against the casing and breathed heavily. “Things have happened lately to make—to drain a man's patience. It can't go on; you can't play with the fire as MacKinnon has done.
“He hit me hard. I'll admit that to you, Red Jenny, because any of my secrets would be safe with the wife of Ned Borden. I've been hungry for days—hungry as I never knew a man could hunger. There's been nothing in life—not even rest—nothing but haunting shadows and jeering voices and thought of Eve yonder—gone from me. Do you know how I can hate? Aye; you do”—nodding heavily. “You, of all people, should know. You don't know how I can love, but, take my word for it, I can love as deeply as I can hate.”
HE WAS lashing himself into a fury with his own words, and a thrill of fright at the hideousness of his face went through the woman, but she did not betray it. Also, there was a sound behind the door she had locked as of some one drawing close to it as if to listen. Eldred went on:
“I drove her away, and it was like tearing the heart out of my body. For a minute that night I hated her because she had stung my pride, and, in the next, I'd have groveled to her if she'd have come back. Too late! Yes—I can admit being wrong. That's why I humbled myself—because I'd been wrong. I humbled myself for Eve and to that trader—that spittle! Does that indicate love to you, when I'd go crawling to him—when I could bargain with him so nothing wrong could happen to her?
“Why, I offered to buy her back, offered him the price of his hooker which burned in my harbor if he'd give her back.” He laughed sharply. “He thought Eve had a hand in that little trick, thought she lured him away from his boat, and I let him go on thinking it. I boasted to him that Eve and I plotted to burn him out, and he threw my offer back in my face!” His rage choked off the words and he shook his head and cleared his throat. “That made a double humiliation piled on top of hate and love—see? And then I went further into humiliation—because of my love for her. Instead of wringing his neck and taking her, I went in the night to bring her back, so he wouldn't know and try to do her harm to spite me. I schemed and plotted and skulked—to keep her safe.
“I got MacKinnon out of his house and away from her by a trick; I had a man outside the door, and when Eve followed the trader out, the fool let her get away. Because he was afraid of MacKinnon, he did that. He smashed down the door of her room to get at her and then slunk off because he was afraid of the trader.” He waggled his head and gave a moaning laugh, and said no more for a long moment.
“I tell you these things”—leaning close to the woman and speaking in low confidence—“so you'll know how badly I want her and how far I'll go to have her back. There's no violence I won't use now; there's no crawling that I'd scorn. She's not with him; she's not with me. You're going to help me find her, Red Jenny, and first you're going to prove that she's not here!”
He straightened and lifted his eyebrows, and his look was terrible.
“She ain't here, Eldred!” Jen cried in a sudden display of fright. “I couldn't give her to you if I would”—lying in her desperation.
“Not here, eh?” He looked narrowly at her. “And where, then?”
“How could I know?”
“You're lying!”
“No, Las—Eldred! Before God——”
“I'll have a look.”
“You'll keep out! This is government property.” The words came without thought, but they gave her assurance. “Set foot here, and I'll report you, and you can't stand looking into very much.”
He stood back, but he laughed in a sort of careless triumph.
“You report me? And what if I told Ned Borden why I cam* here? What of that? What if I'd explain just why I should look here for Eve?”
She saw his teeth gleam. Panic, bewilderment, suffocation gripped her; the lake, the island, his boat were reeling senselessly. She felt his hand on her arm, as if he would thrust her out of the way. She cried aloud, inarticulately, and then, through a slit in a cloud that hung on the western horizon, the red rim of the disappearing sun showed, casting the water before them into crimson shot with blue.
The light fell on Eldred's face and the woman turned to see its source. It steadied her. That same sense of duty which had made the tales she had been telling Eve live roused her above fright. Sundown! And she the keeper of the light! Weakness slipped from her; fright drained away. A righteous rage came in the place of dismay, and with a powerful movement of her arm, she shook off his grasp with such a show of contempt that Eldred was staggered.
“Let go, you carrion! Get out of the way!” she cried. “It's sundown. You're interfering with the light.”
And, backed by her sense of obligation, given assurance and strength and stability by the rigid call of duty when nothing else would have sufficed, she slammed the door and shot the bolt home.
Eldred beat upon it with both fists and cried out, but no response came. He listened and heard heavy feet on the tower stairs. He moved down the steps and looked up ward. The red of the sunset was gone, having endured but that passing moment, but up above another red appeared, as if the crimson of the west had been caught and preserved and focused by the lens in the tower.
A section of the big cylinder up there opened. Jen Borden emerged, a keeper's cap askew on her graying hair, a shotgun in her hands. She stood on the platform with one hand on the railing, looking down at the amazed Eldred.
“I've got enough on you now to put you away for a long time, Eldred, and there's something besides cowardice in my heart to-night,” she said grimly. “The government don't fool with men who fool with lights. See it? A red light, with a bright red flash. It means shoal water for ships, Ed Lasker, and it means darned dangerous water for you! Your move—and good-night!”
She twitched the gun, and Eldred began to move slowly down the path. On his tug he turned to watch her, but she remained on the platform, gun resting across the rail, and she was still there when he rang for the speed ahead which checked the backward movement of his tug and swung him away toward his harbor and the house that was empty.
FOR a long time the woman stood there, gun loose in her hands now, her weight against the tower. She breathed through parted lips as though physically exhausted, and when she went inside, her movements were slow.
Eve was at the bottom of the tower stairs, cringed against the wall, face in her hands. She had not uncovered her eyes when Jen passed her on the way up, nor had she moved since then. The girl was not crying. She was numb only; she was cold, her mind centered on one fact:
MacKinnon had protected her even while he believed she had betrayed him. MacKinnon had defied her father's offer of money while he believed she had conspired to destroy his boat. And it had not been MacKinnon's arms which gagged and hurt her in the darkness that night.
These things raced through and through her mind—and one other: David had come here, searching for her, harried and relieved at sight of her. And she had flung out at him these things: That she never wanted to look in his face again, that she never wanted the sound of his voice in her ears again, that she never wanted a vestige of his memory to remain with her!
It was when Aunt Jen sat down on the step beside her, silent, slow of movement, that a warmth ran through Eve's body—warmth which meant scalding tears and broken sobs and shudders and a yearning for the great arms which did embrace her.
Jen sat without a word, holding the girl close, making no attempt at first to check the outburst, murmuring from time to time her “There, there's!” patting the shuddering back. And that was all. She did not attempt to dam that flood of tears.
“He—he didn't— It wasn't David who grabbed me. You understood?”
“I heard, dearie”—very gently.
“And he wouldn't sell me back. And he never told me he would. I was so afraid—so afraid——”
“We've been wrong about him.”
Silence, and Jen felt the girl tremble before she whispered:
“And I drove him away from here! I told him I never even wanted to think about him again!” All the misery which can be bred between regret and knowledge of injustice done was in that tone, and the woman held her closer, cold cheek against the fever-hot face of the girl.
“And now?” she urged.
“Oh, he was good to me! And I didn't believe him! And there's nothing I can do to make it right now!”
“If you're trying to tell yourself that you're all wrong, dearie, two wrongs never made a right yet; and, anyhow, it ain't in your power to say what you'll do now. There's only one thing to do when your heart talks. You'll go to him—that's what you'll do. It's all you can do, dearie. Nothing else would be right or fair. He had every reason under the sun to hate you and hurt you, and yet he protected you, and it was a dirty, low trick that made you think he wasn't honest to the core. And all this means just one thing, dearie: he loved you; he respected you, and he's down there on his island now, with his heart bleeding, I'll bet. We'll bring him back; I'll bring him back myself, 'cause it was me who sent him away when he came after you.”
“Oh, I couldn't look at him!”
Those were the words she spoke, but the tone was a call, a broken cry of need, of longing, of love, and Jen, gathering her closer, half smiled as she cried:
“It's none of your business now! It's your Aunt Jen's, and before God I'll set this straight if I'm spared another day of fair weather!”
She helped Eve to her feet and led her out of the gloomy stairway. She replenished the fire and turned to see Eve watching her.
“Why,” the girl asked slowly, “did you call my father 'Lasker?'”
IT WAS as if she had, in all calmness, cursed the woman, because Jen's relaxation was more than amazement or shock; she seemed to wilt and reached out a hand to a chair for support. Eve waited, struck by this change, and then walked slowly to the woman.
“You called him 'Lasker,' and said that he couldn't take me from you again. Did that mean—” Jen made a half-movement of her hand, but it was eloquent of a plea for reprieve, for silence. “And he threatened you, and you were afraid. I don't want you to be afraid on my account. That's why I asked you why you called him by another name. What is there about him, Aunt Jenny, that you know?”
“Before the good Lord, Eve, I wish I could tell!” she burst out chokingly. “I can't, though, dearie. It's your right to know, but it ain't my right to tell you—yet. It's somebody else's right to know first. O God, put some starch into my heart!” She lifted her one hand and struck the back of the chair feebly. “Strength is what I need, and faith, and a little Christian trust.” She shook off Eve's reassuring clasp on her hand and moved across the room. “They'd ought to be back before long,” she said huskily, “and mebbe to-night—and mebbe to-morrow——”
She began to cry silently, and Eve did not move or speak, but stood there until Jen made a light and began to prepare the meal. Very little, indeed, was said until the supply-boat chugged to its berth, and then Jen told of Eldred's coming, of driving him off, but she spoke no word of the factors which had so distressed her, and not once did she look at Eve.
THAT night, David MacKinnon sat beside Gam Gallagher's wood-stove in St. James and smoked his pipe and talked in short sentences that seemed to hurt.
“I don't like to leave you flat. You can get Patrick, and he'll do as well as I could; the heavy work's done there, anyhow, and—it's my move.”
His smile was strained. The older man smoked a while in silence.
“It's none o' my business, o' course. I wouldn't have ye stay on. I was afraid from the first that somethin'——”
They let the matter rest there then, the one reticent, the other demonstrating that delicacy of feeling of which gruff men are sometimes capable. But he did say this:
“An' ye'll be goin'?”
David shifted with something like relief; this was fresh interest.
“I'll take the first tug over to Charlevoix. That'll likely be to-morrow afternoon, when the lift's in. I guess I'll go to salt water, Gam. It's a long way off, and the lakes—they're a little raw!”
The new day was crystal-clear, with a light breeze out of the northwest and the near horizons crisp as the lines of a steel etching. Off to the westward, where no land lay in sight, a false wall of cliffs, colored in changing lavenders and mauves, hung between the pale blue of sky and deep blue of water. Deep blue, indeed, as only these lakes can be blue, flecked by silver crests of bursting wavelets here and there and with fingers of vivid green stretching out into it, where shoals shelved toward great depths. The forest-clad Beavers, until now gray-brown and brash, stood in soft, pale verdure beneath the unclouded sun.
From the straits a trio of lean carriers progressed up Lake Michigan, stately in length and line, drawing their majestic plumes of smoke after them. Between these and the Squaw Island lighthouse, a tug lifted its gang of gill-nets, crawling under checked power as the miles of twine with their imprisoned fish came over the drum. A host of gulls wheeled above the craft, flashing silver against the sky as the foaming crests flashed silver against the lake.
Eve stood near the boat-landing, watching the supply-boat bear southward. Ned Borden and his wife were aboard and their destination was High Island, and their errand was to quiet the turmoil in her heart. She knew that, and Aunt Jen had been strong in her promises that their problem was simple, but, for all this, the girl was filled with misgiving. Yesterday she had said that she could not find the courage to call David back; this morning she had drawn back fearfully from Jen's suggestion that she go with them, but now she knew there was nothing she would not do, no begging, no humility she would not undergo to pick up the thread of her relationship with David where it had been broken.
Had she been less disturbed, it is likely that Eve would have marked the change that had taken place in Aunt Jen. Since Ned's return last evening, when he had been told of that ominous visit of the afternoon, the woman had gone about as though repressing some impulse that was clamoring for outlet. Eve had heard her voice late at night, talking earnestly to Ned, an unbroken, monotonous blur of sound, but there could have been no expression of what was in Jen's heart, because this morning she had been unchanged, absorbed, meeting even the girl's eyes with only fleeting glances and hardly looking at her husband.
But there was too much of her own self in Eve's mind to think about others that morning, and now, as she stood alone, she was engaged in trying not to let her hope rise too recklessly, and she began to walk up and down slowly. Pete Larsen had come off watch at six and was asleep now, and she knew that the Dane would slumber noisily for hours. Eve was glad to be alone.
She had only half-consciously remarked the tug lifting far away. It was the only indication of life she saw, besides the pair of loons with necks erect not far offshore. What was astir on the lake, now that the supply-boat was gone, did not interest her, and so she was not aware of that other craft, the gray of whose hull and sails made it inconspicuous. She did not see it at all until the boat was within a mile, and then she gave it no heed, for the mackinaw's course was laid before the wind and it would pass Squaw Island by with a good margin.
She walked down the beach, and it might have been her movement, the flash of her white waist against the gold and green of the background that attracted the man in the sailboat. Anyhow, he altered his course and stood in, craft heeled slightly with the breeze.
Eve stopped when the change attracted her. She saw the boat approach, saw a figure huddled over the tiller, peering landward fixedly. Soon she made him out—a grimy, gray old man with vacant brown eyes, and when he was near, she could see the lips moving silently in the thin beard.
Until he was almost inshore the man retained that strained position over the tiller and then, with a start, put down his helm. The mackinaw came into the wind, came to rest against the landing, and the man stood up.
He remained there for an interval with the canvas whispering and the reef-points rattling in gentle staccato, staring at the girl as if transfixed, as if oblivious of any other thing on lake or land, and then he stepped out of the boat, clambering over the rail without once taking that set stare from Eve. A long white welt of scar ran over his right eye into the hair. One hand went up there to rub the scar, and something like dismay came into his gaze. His lips stopped moving for the moment, but they began again when he went slowly toward the girl.
On that, Eve became frightened. She drew back a step, as though to run away, for this strange old man and his unnatural interest filled her with apprehension. But he spoke.
“You!” he muttered shortly, and then spoke the word again, long-drawn and in something like a wail this time. “You-u-u-u!”
He began to breath sharply, as if the brief effort had drained his strength. The girl could see that he trembled, but he kept on toward her very slowly, one hand outstretched.
“You!” he cried again. “I came for him—and I find——”
It was not fear of violence which went through the girl wave after wave. There was no danger from that feeble old man, but fright was heavy on her—the fright of the weirdly strange—for his words chilled her as might an unexplained and eery sound.
“What do you want?” she heard herself asking. “Who are you looking for?”
He did not appear to notice, but came on until he was a half-dozen paces from her and frowning as he stared into her face.
“For him—for him! And I find you—you—Eve!”
ON HER name, a change appeared in his eyes, like a passing moment of clarity, fading into irresolution and perplexity, and then that unwavering stare returned.
Something in the girl stirred—some long-forgotten, feeble thing, like faint memory striving its best to rise to the surface. He had spoken her name—this man she had never seen, this crazy man, and she turned to be away from him.
But on that gesture he lurched forward, dropping to his knees, struggling to rise, snatching at her for help, and his clawlike hand caught hers; and though she would have drawn it away from him, he clung—not desperately, not with strength, but gently, with something of a childish touch, an appeal, and for the instant she remained passive. Then he began to laugh and cry out:
“For him—and I find you! Little Eve! Little Eve! My Eve!”
His cracked voice was terrible. The relief, the elation, the triumph in it put her in a panic. She tried to draw away, but he had her one hand in both of his, and she could feel the steady tremor of his body.
“For him! For him— I came, and it's you— Dear little Eve! My Eve! Ho! Ho! Ho!”
His voice died out, and something like bewilderment came over him. He let go her hand and made a brushing gesture before his eyes as though smoke were there. He looked away from her, out into the lake, and began to laugh—a terrible laugh. The misery, the heart-break, the disillusionment in it! It was weak at the beginning, and it died to a whisper in his throat, and the whisper ended in a sob.
He rose, panting; he looked into Eve's face, and a smile of great sadness twitched at his lips as he shook his head.
“No,” he whispered; “it can't—” He frowned, as though trying to remember. “No—you're like her. No—it can't——”
He turned about, and his eyes rested on his sailboat. He threw out a hand then and his head rocked backward and he laughed once more—a bitter, beaten laugh—and walked to the landing. He put the force of his scrawny arms on the bow of the boat and shoved; the craft moved, and the wind set her in a slow drift from the land. He scrambled aboard and made his way aft to the tiller, fumbling with the sheet-lines.
He turned the boat before the breeze and her wings took it; she edged away from the lee of the island and the water began a contented purr about her bows. He settled himself beside the tiller, and once again his head rocked backward and the girl heard that empty, hopeless laugh.
He had spoken her name; he had touched something in her heart.
“Come back! Here—come back!”
She found herself calling out to him, but he did not turn to look. A puff of wind heeled the mackinaw, speeding it, and then died.
“Why, he's——”
She did not even know what had prompted that sentence which she could not finish. She turned about toward the buildings, as though to ask for help, but only Pete was there, sleeping soundly. She looked again at the sailboat, and running along the beach to where a skiff was resting, shoved it into the water. She looked over her shoulder for direction and began to row feverishly. The light skiff surged across the water, but the wind, which had dropped, freshened for the time and she could not gain. She realized this after she had gone a mile, and stood up and waved and called again, but if the man looked back, she could not see, he was that far away.
It was useless to keep on, so she sat down in the skiff and, drifting slowly, watched the sailboat move on toward Garden Island. The wind lifted, leaving the water about her undulating glass, but it dipped again yonder; she could see its black line, and the mackinaw kept on. She started to row back and found that she had little strength. She stopped and sat still. That old man! Eldred—his coming yesterday—her panic at thought of his power—her suffering when she knew that David had been— These, and others—the undefined distress that was on her now. She sat still for a long time, then rowed again and stopped. She did not want to go ashore. The light motion of the boat soothed her. Now and then she dipped the oars to overcome the drift and, when the sun grew hot, she dozed. The wall of mirage in the west gave way to a sharp horizon; the freighters were out of sight, their smoke a faint blur.
TWICE again the old man laughed. He paid little attention to the progress of his boat, and between those outbursts of crazy mirth he sat bent over the tiller, lips tight and no longer moving, but once he sat up sharply and made that brushing gesture before his eyes, as if he would clear his mind of the haze which fuddled it.
Land loomed before him. He was close in, and a man was standing on the beach, watching him through a glass. For long the glass held on the boat, and then it was lowered. The hand which held it went behind Eldred's back to be clasped lightly by its mate, and he stood, shoulders slightly drooped, head hung forward.
On that gesture, the man at the tiller straightened. It was not a start; he brought himself to an approximately erect position slowly, as a man will into whose understanding dawns some fact too important to cause a start. He fumbled in his shirt-front and then let his hand rest there, gripping, content.
He let go the tiller; the canvas swung over, going limp as the wind drained out. The boat bumped on the boulders and listed a bit and swung round and came to a stop. The old man stood up. The uncertainty which had been about his movements was gone. With a hand on the mizzen-shrouds, the other still thrust into his shirt-front, he stepped into the water. He slipped and floundered and fell, but no shock at the chill showed in his face and the one hand was not withdrawn from his breast. Water dripping from his scraggly beard, even, he stood up and waded toward Norman Eldred, who waited, watching curiously his approach.
And at the edge of the water, twenty feet from Eldred, the other halted. There was a stiffness to his back, an obvious effort to square his shoulders, and then he laughed. That laugh! It was wild, weird triumph—success, joy, incomparable rage were mingled in it.
“Lasker!” he shouted in his thin, cutting voice. “Lasker, you've——”
The glass had dropped from the other's hand and it had whipped to his side pocket, but even as the pistol came out, spurting its jet of flame, the old man drew his hand from his shirt; a rusted, aged revolver was clutched there, and he brandished it in an imperious gesture as its muzzle fell toward Eldred.
Just that—those two shots, the one following the other as quickly as a man can clap his hands. The bareheaded old man staggered a bit and spread his feet as if to resist a blow. Eldred's hand dropped to his side; the pistol fell into the sand, muzzle first, sticking up there as if it had been planted. Then the other hand moved slowly to spread itself over his belly. He swayed, and a sound came from him that a man might make who had been kicked in the stomach. His legs gave suddenly and he pitched forward, falling on hands and knees, hatless, head swaying like a bear in distress.
The other did not speak. He turned and waded stiffly toward his mackinaw. The wind was gone now. He clambered painfully aboard and hauled down on the foresail. He half fell into the cockpit and his revolver rattled in the bottom. A breath of breeze came and swung the boat about. She was free, making bare headway off the beach.
And Eldred, lifting his face as the first drop of crimson stained the yellow sand where his dark shadow lay, could see the lettering:
REVENGE
PORT BRUCE. ONT.
His lips formed one word: “Missed.” And again, in a hateful whisper: “Missed.”
Over at High Island the lighthouse supply-boat was docked, and Gam Gallagher, who had just brought his Kittiwake in behind her, stood on deck, talking to Borden and his wife.
“He was goin' to Charlevoix on the first tug,” he said thoughtfully. “It's likely he's gone by now.”
Jen turned abruptly to her husband as though she would speak, but she did not for a moment; then her words came in a whisper:
“He's running away. He's running away and he's got a darned big start, Ned. What'll we do?”
The keeper looked at her gravely.
“It seems,” he said, “that this keeps slipping through our fingers.”
“Oh, no! Don't say that!” she burst out, with a queer panic. “Don't say that, Ned! We've got to find him. I owe it— Come aboard here; come with me!” she cried almost frantically, grasping his arm, and led the way into the supply-boat's cabin. She slammed the companion-door and faced him. “This is for you alone,” she said. “My cowardly heart, Ned, my cowardly heart—” After a moment she began to talk rapidly in a strained voice.
DIMMOCK, from the doorway of the ice-house, where he hounded two men who were packing fish, caught a glimpse of a strange object making through the trees behind the store. He turned and stared a moment and then began to run.
“Hi!” he called. “Hi, Eldred! What——”
At his shout, the laborious progress, half a crawl, half a dragging of the numbing legs, was checked, and Eldred sank, panting, to one hip. He looked up with a twisted grimace when Dimmock squatted beside him.
He said one word: “Shot,” and moved his hand to his stomach, and the other, looking, saw the dark stain on the clothing.
“Shot! Who done it, Eldred? Who?” The barest suggestion of a dismissing gesture checked him.
“Get me in—and get Eve. Send every boat—to High, St. James—Squaw—everywhere!”
He closed his eyes then, and Dimmock heard his teeth grind against pain or weakness.
Dimmock roared for help, cursing as men ran up from the beach. They bore Eldred to his house and stretched him on the wide window-seat, and Dimmock began unfastening his clothes.
“Not that!” The eyes did not open, but the voice had some of its normal timbre. “I'll be gone—soon. Get Eve—or I'll follow you back from hell itself!”
There was scattering then. Three of the fleet were in the harbor, two steam-tugs and one of the gasoline-boats. One went to High Island, another to St. James, and to Squaw a third. To the man at the wheel of the tug bound for Beaver Island, Dimmock talked earnestly,
“A doctor,” he said, with an emphatic nod. “Stop at the coast-guard station an' telephone across. Tell 'em to come; it's life or death, with death gainin' fast—tell him!”
The boats were gone, stringing out across the reef, separating then with engines wide open, bright excitement dancing in the eyes of the crews.
And the one bound for St. James checked first, while a man ran into the coast-guard station and told the keeper his errand. The one for High Island passed the lighthouse supply-boat as it left the harbor, while the last bore down upon the skiff drifting off Squaw Island, and the man at the wheel saw the girl who had been dozing start and look up and grasp her oars and row frantically for the light. He opened the pilot-house door and hung out and rang for the motor to stop as he drew near.
“Your father's been shot!” he called. “He's sent for you!”
His words penetrated Eve's panic. The earnestness of his face could not be doubted, but for a moment she did not cease rowing. The boat was close beside her. She could have touched it with an oar. She saw the man at the motor peering out at her, and in his eyes was that same consternation which marked the expression of the other.
It was not until after she spoke that she stopped her mechanical effort to escape.
“Shot?” she asked explosively,
“Shot.” The wheelsman nodded. “An hour ago. He sent for you. Dimmock said to come.”
Shot! Dying! It did not occur to her that this might be a ruse; the expressions of those faces could not have been feigned.
Dying! The thought went through her with a thrill. Relief? Terror? She did not know.
She knew this, though: She was no longer afraid. Death had laid its hand on the power that had made her fear. She found herself standing tight-faced on the stern of the boat bound back for Indian Harbor, the skiff she had been in towing at its hundred feet of line.
IN CHARLEVOIX, a young physician was speaking into a telephone.
'Hello! … You, Sheriff? Say—I've just had a call from St. James. Eldred's been shot. … Yes, Sure enough! Bad, too, I guess. They want help, and I—… You bet!” He laughed rather nervously. “I didn't want to go alone.”
His gaze went out the window while he listened to what the other said, and he saw a varnished speed-boat drop its bow in a long glide across the harbor. He spoke.
“Tim White's been tuning up that big speed-boat. … Sure! … S'pose he would. She'll do forty miles an hour.”
He hung up the receiver and began packing instruments in a bag.
Dimmock was alone in the room with Eldred when Eve came through the door.
Eldred was lying where he had been put down, breathing slowly. Now and then his face had wrenched with pain, but he had not spoken since giving that imperious order. He had looked at Dimmock questioningly when he returned after despatching the messengers, and had closed his eyes when the man began to report. Dimmock's voice died out, and he sat down and waited, eyes very wide with excitement. A half-hour later he rose and brought water. Eldred drank without a word and sank back. The drink had been good, but his ironical smile seemed to ask: “What for? Why this moment of respite?”
Dimmock did not get up when Eve entered. She looked first at him, then at the figure on the window-seat, hands crossed over the wound. She made hardly a stir as she came in, but his eyes opened and looked at her, and after an interval one hand reached out appealingly.
The girl stood by the door a moment, drawing back, staring at that white, bloodless hand with the tufts of black hair; then her gaze went to his face and saw the hunger—the terrible, unearthly hunger—in his eyes.
“Eve,” he said then in assurance. “Eve.” It was like the ending of suspense.
She went forward and took the hand, kneeling beside him, speechless. He drew her hand close to his side and pressed it there, where she could feel the rise and fall of his ribs as he breathed.
“You're back!,” he said weakly and smiled. “Back!” And a movement of his chest startled her—it was so strong an indication of the laugh which did not reach his throat.
He had looked away, and now he sighed and then moved his head so he could see her.
“There isn't much time,” he began, and his face showed a flicker of pain. “It is something I hadn't planned on—this talk, I mean—something I'd intended to keep. Death hadn't entered my plan—” He released her hand and she sank down, sitting on one hip, listening. “Confession!” There was contempt in the word. “King Norman at the confessional!”—with much of his old jeering irony, and a breath of laughter followed. “Not to clear my conscience, though—whatever that may be—not to unburden myself. I'd rather go on—holding it, like I've held this kingdom of mine; but it's all I can do for you now—take away the wonder.”
He paused for a time and closed his eyes and did not open them when he went on:
“Once, years ago, I thought about dying—just casually. I made a will. Dimmock knows; somebody else witnessed it, too. It's in the box in the desk there. It leaves this—this kingdom to you. 'To the woman known as Eve Eldred,' it says. That, so there'd be no mistake. But you'd—have wondered.”
His eyes opened and searched her face; their luster was dimmed so that they were almost gentle—a quality which she had never seen there. They were almost soft eyes now, nearly tender and loving. She stirred and caught her breath.
“No—not you! I don't want to hear you speak, daughter—want to remember your last words down there in the store, asking for my—protection. Besides, there's no time for two—to talk——”
His fingers dallied with the skirts of his coat and he looked into space.
“'To the woman who is known as Eve Eldred,'” he repeated in a whisper. “That means, of course, that you're not Eve Eldred. You're Eve—not Eldred.”
A SHUDDER ran through the girl, and she looked about quickly. Dimmock sat gripping the arms of his chair. Eldred's eyes were on her with a slight show of irritation at her movement.
“We'll get back, somehow—to the beginning. It's hard”—frowning—“to know I just where——”
That was a really long pause; his eyes held on the girl's face, but he seemed to be speculating about something else, not thinking of her. The room was absolutely silent. Eve could hear the pelt of her own heart.
Finally he whispered ever so faintly:
“You're so like her”—as though his strength was draining—“all but the hair. You know that, though; you saw her picture. It was hers—your mother's.” His emphasis startled her—it came with such strength—and his voice seemed fuller after that.
“Her hair was light, as light as—yours is dark.
“She was as bewitching as you—perhaps more so—I can't tell. Years and thus—this hole in me get between us.” He stirred slightly and frowned. “She could drive men wild, but she wouldn't—try for that. She could have anything, any man she wanted—but she wasn't interested.
“That's the way sometimes—not contempt—indifference—worse than contempt. It's a rampart and can't be beaten down.
“That was in Port Bruce, Ontario. She was there when I came, young and a buyer. I was only to stay a few days. I stayed until——”
He tried to shake his head, for he seemed to be rambling from the course on which he had determined, and for many minutes he lay with closed eyes; but there was that about him which kept the girl quiet and motionless except for one appealing glance at Dimmock, who responded in no way, but sat there like a man carved from wood and hideously colored, with his blanched face and flaming beard and china-blue eyes.
“That was the end of me.” He went on so unexpectedly that his voice was a shock. “I was all befuddled, all lost. I'd had situations before, with women, with men—and had handled them offhand—that way. She—was different.
“She'd listen—so gently—and smile. She was sorry, she said. I believe she was, in a manner. But she always—shrank. It was a gesture she always greeted me with—shrinking. Hard enough to break in men or dogs, but with women—” His movement, had he been erect, would have been a shrug. “It ruined me. I guess there is such a thing as heart-break. Looking back, I can explain it no other way—heart-break. But they mend—hearts. There was a man— Wetherby— William— Hah!” His voice had risen on the name; his snort was disdain. “Gentle, meek, soft-handed and soft-voiced. I cracked his head with my open hand when I knew.
“She wouldn't take me, who became a king. She'd have Wetherby. Ah, she'd have Wetherby!” He tossed himself half over, with a surprising show of vitality, and lay with his face toward the window, staring at the harbor. “She'd have Wetherby.” And then he lay still, lay there so long and so motionless that Dimmock rose cautiously, eyes even wider than before, but on the light creak of his chair, one of Eldred's arms lifted and he strained in an attempt to roll back and face Eve. She rose quickly. She did not speak; she could not have uttered a sound—her throat was that dry—but she turned him over and he sighed and smiled.
“Not Edward Lasker—that was me. She'd have Wetherby. No; a man can't forget.
“A man can't. I know! I tried all sorts of things—women and work, and crime, even; but a man can't—not things like that—in here. Eve, in your heart. A hurt in your heart makes this I've got in my body to-day seem like balm. No—a man can't.
“I had to go back, you see; I had to see her again. I hoped maybe she'd have tired of Wetherby. Oh, yes; I'd have been glad of that. I'd have waited. I'd have been second or—tenth—any place—just to have her; but she wasn't that kind.
“Three years I waited, fighting it, hoping she'd be tired and—relish a change—any change—even me—and afraid to see that my hope had no foundation. I should have known that—knowing her, your mother.”
ANOTHER pause and, after working his lips, he gestured for the water again. Eve held it and he drank, his head trembling as she supported it. He sank back, whispering, “Rest—rest,” and did not rouse for a time.
Eve turned to Dimmock and whispered:
“How did it happen? Who——”
But she saw the change in his face and looked to see one of her father's hands upraised, commanding silence. Dimmock did not reply; she gave up trying.
“Eve?” He called her back, and she sat on the bench beside him, looking down into his face, restraining her impatience.
“I looked in,” Eldred went on. “Looked in their window at night—three years afterward. She—your mother—was putting their child in bed—their child—his child, by her—his Eve. And she was happy! Ah, happy!” His voice had whined up to a snarl which sent a chill through the girl's limbs. “Happy, with his child—and with him— God Aldmighty, a fool could have told” that! A fool could have seen that happiness—she with him—and his child——”
His eyes blazed a moment, and then he closed them.
“It's a short passage from loving to hating, Eve—little Eve—my Eve! I've been a good hater always; women and men both knew it. She—your mother—said that she knew it; that was the reason—one reason— And I, Edward Lasker, outside, peering in at that happiness. God, if I'd had a conscience, it wouldn't have stood before that—that night!” He swallowed and caressed his lips with his tongue. “So easy,” he went on. “So very easy—and unique. That was why. You'd never suspect that—would you, Dimmock? You'd never suspect a man would steal the child of a woman who'd broken his heart, would you? No—that saved it for me. Unique, by God—different! Killed him? Killed her? Bah! Anybody could have done that; but to steal their happiness— That hurt!”
He was looking straight at Eve, but if he detected her horror and recoil, he gave no evidence of it.
“It wasn't easy—you squawked.” He laughed grimly. “They had the town out, and it was a blow from the north. I tried the beach and knew I couldn't make it, carrying you. I came on a boat hauled up; I got in and afloat—blowing great guns, and I didn't have a plan and only one oar. But I didn't care—not much. There was nothing in life for me that night but the stealing of their happiness. You in your blankets didn't mean anything then, except that—their happiness, not mine—not that night.”
He shook his head and sighed, and the girl, horror-struck, started to draw away. He felt the movement, and, without opening his eyes, caught her skirt to hold her there. She was so weak that that feeble impediment would have been enough. She was dizzy, taken with vertigo; she sat down after a long wait and he went on:
“God was with me—I mean that—if there ever was a God. A schooner beating up for a lee picked me up and we made it all light—you and I, Eve. You didn't know—you were only two. Only two—years of happiness for them—with you.
A LONG pause. The wind rustled the young leaves and died, and that pregnant silence endured interminably before Eldred spoke again.
“Where was I? Ah, yes.” A sigh. “That was the beginning. I'd figured on ditching you safe somewhere—not for your sake, but so they couldn't get you. I turned you over to a woman—and somehow she hung on, got to loving you. Me, Edward Lasker, becoming Norman Eldred, keeping low, still hot with revenge achieved.
“She—your mother—died that spring. Ah, it was blow for blow, an eye for an eye, a life for a heart! She went out—just faded—after her damned happiness with him— Come back, Eve!”
She had risen, whirling away and hiding her face.
“Eve?”—very gently. “Not that, please! Remember, I'm drunk with death. If I overstate—forgive. I want you to know—there'll be no mystery by night then.”
After she came back, he repeated, “By night,” and strained to look outdoors at the peaceful sunlight filtering through the greening boughs of trees and at the flat, ice-blue lake.
“That's all—except about you.” His eyes on her began to smolder with a new light; it began with that tenderness again, and the tenderness gave to a passion—a hunger, joy of a fierce sort. “And then I began to know how sweet my revenge had been. You! They'd loved you—yes; and I—” He smiled, and one hand stirred as in a gesture of helplessness.
“Red Jenny—she was the woman who took you. She kept you a year in her house. And she learned, too, to love— A devil of a time—driving her off from sharing you. You'd got into her heart, too, by then—aye; into her heart! Like mine—deeply in. Sentiment? Bah! No; not sentiment—something else. I had something to live for you—and I was sharing you with Red Jenny.
“Had to threaten her—had to threaten that she'd been a party to abduction. She didn't know where you came from until then. She thought— Devil knows what she thought! I didn't care—at first. I'd figured on ditching you with her—anywhere but sending you back to Wetherby and your mother. But I couldn't get you out of my arms—out of my mind, I mean—smiling faintly. “And Red Jenny—a Tatar! She'd have loved you if I'd let her. You'd have been safe enough; but it would have meant—my sharing you.
“And there was danger from Wetherby.” He stirred sharply, and one hand hovered over the wound. “It had put him off his head by then. He'd begun to hunt, and I—moved just in time. He came to her place—to Red Jenny's. He was that close, but he was off his head and couldn't make her understand then or she might have turned on me and helped him. Yes; she would have—surely.
“And I had you safe—in the Quebec convent.” His fingers plucked at his coat again, and his voice had sunk to a mere whisper. “I shut her mouth—with threats. She was innocent, but she didn't know that. Abduction! It sounds ugly to a woman. And Wetherby was gone, and nobody knew where, and the story was fading out. You—I had you safe—for myself alone!”
He tried to laugh, but no sound came, and again there was silence. His breath was faster and lighter, and it seemed an effort for him to hold his eyelids open. A faltering hand moved to his abdomen, and on its light pressure he winced.
“I wouldn't share you”—in a bare whisper. “I wouldn't share you with anybody. Jode MacKinnon—I wrecked him because you liked him. The story got about that you'd helped, that you'd changed the lights. I let it go. It helped—to keep you safe for me. Then the woman to teach you—I wanted you to learn, but I sent her away because you liked her.”
He lay still for a long time, and the girl watched him in dumb horror.
“They all loved you, Eve. I brought the men here—'scum of the lakes,' they're well called— I brought that kind so you'd need me more than ever. Red Jenny came and risked her happiness to be near you, and I sent her away. That was a scare—when she came. I had one chance—her love for her husband. It makes cowards of men—and women. Your dog, even, I shot, because you—liked him—him—a dog——”
Again the plucking of fingers a moment, and then the hand that had been moving slipped from his body to the cushion on which he lay upturned, fingers curled lifelessly. His eyes were half closed, and his breath through the pale and parted lips was very slight.
The girl rose, and he did not stir. She made a movement as though to fly from that room but stopped. Where to go? And there was no danger here now.
Dimmock rose and approached softly, looking down at the figure of his master. He rubbed his chin and then his wide eyes turned on Eve.
“I sent for a doctor,” he whispered hoarsely. “You stay. I'll go look where it happened.”
He was gone softly, as from a room where some one slept, closing the door without a sound. Eve watched him go through the trees beyond the store, head lowered as he scanned the ground and found the trail he sought.
Her heart was rapping smartly; there seemed no strength in her body. She tried to look at the figure of the man she had so long called “father” and could not. A sharp shiver ran through her. She moved along slowly toward that one nail in the wall, the place where the picture of her mother had hung. It was gone, and she searched Eldred's desk for it. It was not there. It was nowhere in the room. Back by where it had hung she stopped again, and the high sunlight, striking through the window, was caught by a glass particle on the floor. She stooped and saw it—fine glass stamped to powder. She guessed vaguely at what had become of the picture.
The things her father had told her came pelting back—her abduction, Jen Borden's place in it, the savagery with which Eldred had tried to hold her as his own. But one thing, she thought, had he left untouched in his narrative—David's part in this tragedy of a house of cards. David! She felt a wave of elation at thought of him, and a sickening swirl downward again.
IN THE stillness of the day, a faint droning, steady, regular, drew near. Eve looked out and saw, standing in through the buoys, the low hull of a speed-boat, bow high out of water, fan-shaped wake of foam spreading out across the calm lake, its spume of vapor thinning in the sunshine. The drone rose to a bellow, and the bellow ceased suddenly. The boat rode on even keel into the harbor, swinging for the dock.
And then they were in the room, confusing the bewildered girl—the doctor, another man who was the sheriff, and Dimmock, holding in his hand the pistol Eldred had dropped on the beach.
Her father did not stir when the physician bent over him and felt for a pulse, but he moved sharply when the practised hand drew apart his clothing and displayed the white flesh about the dark blotch with its small puncture. His eyes opened, and he looked into the face of the man.
“No—use,” he said in a weak, throaty tone.
Again the hand on his pulse and his eyes closed, and the doctor looked at the others. When he spoke, it was to the sheriff.
“No chance,” he said.
On that, Dimmock started and uttered a slight groan. Eve remained standing apart, watching all in silence.
Then it was the sheriff addressing her and Dimmock with an inclusive glance.
“What happened?”
Dimmock shook his head and held out the pistol.
“He come draggin' himself in three hours ago. I found this by his tracks on the beach. No other sign; no track but his.” The sheriff took the pistol and threw out the magazine. “Here!” Dimmock handed him an empty cartridge-shell. “I found it by where he fell.”
“He fired, eh?” The sheriff's gaze was challenging Dimmock. “That's all you know? This may be murder, and if you know anything——”
“That's every word.”
The other considered, looking at the physician.
“Well, God knows he had enemies enough! Maybe somebody had cause enough; but it's a killing, and——”
His unfinished sentence indicated clearly that there could be but one path of duty for him. He turned to the girl.
“What do you know?” She tried to speak and could not; just shook her head. “Where were you?”
She gestured and said:
“Squaw Island. In a skiff this morning——”
The man looked at her sharply and would have spoken again, but a murmur from Eldred attracted him. The four looked at the dying man.
“Eve”—a mere breath of the word—“Eve.” The fingers of the outstretched hand moved, a suggestion of a beckoning gesture. “Come close. Ah, Eve, don't hate me—don't hate me!” And in the feeble voice, an echo of the ironical strength it had once possessed, was tragedy—stark, utter tragedy, the cry of a broken heart.
The girl stood above him, shrinking, eyes filled with terror. The sheriff stepped close to her.
“Ask him what about it—who did it,” he prompted.
At that, Eldred's eyes opened wider, and after a sustained effort he moved his head slightly, looking from one to the other—Dimmock, to the doctor, to the sheriff—and in their mournful depths lighted one more flare. It was diabolical; it was hatred; it was cunning—a last flash of the soul that was passing.
“Simple,” he said, “Simple. MacKinnon—he thought I had you, Eve. He shot me down. He—MacKinnon—ah, he——”
The breath drained from his chest and the rigidity went from his figure. His neck settled and the beard was crushed against his chest. His lids sank slowly until only a slit of his eye showed, and that flare of triumphant bitterness faded slowly into expressionless extinction. The doctor touched the wrist again and unclasped his fingers and rose.
“The king is dead,” he said grimly.
And in Eve's ears was penting one word: “MacKinnon—MacKinnon—MacKinnon.” She was in terror this time. That was murder, and David, because of her, for revenge—for——
Then the word again:
“MacKinnon! MacKinnon, eh?” It was the sheriff's voice. “Hell! That's too bad.” And from his tone it was certain that there was no way out.
He was shaking his head regretfully, but checked the gesture, for Eve was facing him, lips working, palms tight against her breasts.
“What's the matter?” he said, for her expression was startling.
“It wasn't MacKinnon,” she answered evenly. “I killed him—I did! This morning. I rowed over from the light. Larsen was alone there and asleep. They caught up with me before I got back. I did it, and Dimmock can tell you why. He heard——”
The sheriff took the cigar from his mouth in amazement.
Eve walked across the room and stood, face to the cold fireplace, hands clasped tightly. They had accused David, and this would let him get away—get away——
“Well, that makes it simple,” she heard the sheriff say. “But maybe you'd better get the bullet, Doc. We may need some evidence.”
Then they were stirring about the room, and she put out a hand to the mantle for support.
“You watch her, Doc,” the sheriff added. “I'll look around.”
IT REQUIRED a long, long time for Jen Borden to tell her story. She spoke slowly, in a flat, strained voice, and there was so much to tell—the secrets of so many years to be bared. Her husband sat on the locker beside her, and his eyes did not leave her face for an instant, nor did he speak. There was no occasion for interruption, because the story she had to tell had been repressed for long, had been rehearsed so many times that it came clearly and with no lapses in narrative to confuse her listener.
“That's all,” she said finally. “That's all, Ned. That's what I've carried for ten years. That's what I've been too big a coward to tell, because I've been so happy. You said once that the thing I could do to make you hate me would be to lie or to do something dishonorable. Well, I've lived a lie, I guess, and I've done as dishonorable a thing as any woman could do. It wasn't too late when I found out, mebbe. I might'ave set out then and found Wetherby and put him on Lasker's track. We'd found the baby, mebbe, but I was afraid. I'd been a party to it— I— Oh, Neddie!”
She turned from him then, rising and fumbling for her handkerchief, but he was beside her, drawing her back to the seat.
“I've known for a long time,” he said, “that there was something between you and Eldred or the girl. It didn't matter much, but it used to hurt, except when I stopped to think that maybe I couldn't have a right to know everything that you had to tell.”
After a moment she looked at him curiously, with wet eyes.
“What are you driving at?”
“I guess I know what you've been through in keeping something back. Do you remember, Jenny, that day you paid your last rent on the Sailors' Rest and damned the man who'd take money from a business that couldn't pay without women and whisky? Those were your words: 'Women and whisky.'”
“Why, sure! That's where I seen you first. That's where this—this blessed happiness begun, wasn't it?”
“I owed it to you,” he said, and, at her startled exclamation, went on: “You see, I realized your hopes had gone smash because you tried to be decent in a hell-hole. Jenny, I was the man who was taking the money from you. My savings had gone into that building.”
“Oh, and I said them things about you!”
He nodded.
“And they're still on my heart like scars, and since then I've been trying to sort of make up by being as good to you as I knew.”
Jen dropped her handkerchief and straightened.
“Why, you old skinflint!” she boomed. “You old bloodsucker! If I'd known that, do you think you'd had a minute's peace from then on? Do you think I'd worried about what was none of your business if I'd known that you was holding out on me? So that was it, eh? That's why you hounded me—because you wanted to wash out your sins? And that's how the Sailors' Rest got to be a sailors' mission, is it?” He nodded. “Well, of all the skulking, low-down——”
And then the emotion which her bluster had covered burst out, and he held her close while she clung to him and wept.
They were heading across toward Beaver Island shortly, standing side by side at the wheel of the boat, a new excitement about Jen, a new enthusiasm in Ned's face.
“It's our job, sure enough,” he said. “We're the ones who know; we'll have to get that boy if we follow him to kingdom come. And Eve—Lord, Jenny, it's another part of our job trying to make up to her for what she's been through.”
As they rounded the lower end of Beaver Island to swing southward, four boats were revealed moving toward them and in a close line. It was late in the day for fishers to be starting out, and Ned watched their approach curiously. As they came abreast of the leading boat, a man leaned over its rail and shouted. Ned put his head out and tucked a hand behind his ear; the man called again and pointed toward Garden Island, but still they could not make out what he said above the bang of exhausts.
“Strange!” he commented. And then, from his wife:
“Lookit! There's David now. See? In the pilot-house of the Fisherboy!”
The keeper saw David. Even at that distance, his face seemed to be drawn. They signaled, but he replied only with a brief gesture, mistaking their hails for greetings. They swung about at once to follow and overtake, and came abreast of the second boat—a steam-tug, this, making less noise—and the man who leaned out to give the news could make himself heard.
Jen was still trying to attract David by waving her handkerchief, but the man who called across the water took her mind from this.
“Hear about Eldred?”
“No. What?”
“Shot!”
“Shot?”
“Yup. Dyin'. Doctor an' sheriff are there. Come on!”
They fell into the procession of boats which made toward Indian Harbor.
AS THE first of them gained a view of the well-protected bay, they saw the sleek speed-boat just moving out from Eldred's dock, the sheriff standing in the cockpit and watching them. The bellowing of the motor was checked at a word from the sheriff, and when the first tug came close enough for him to see David MacKinnon on deck, he gave another order and the fleet craft pulled again to her moorings.
“You're MacKinnon,” the sheriff said when David came to the rail. “Come on along here. Got somethin' to talk over with you.”
The two men went up the dock to the beach while the other tugs came to rest and the word spread among the Beaver Islanders. Rumor and conjecture flew while Aunt Jen Borden stood listening and blurting impatient questions and watching David anxiously.
The sheriff stopped and looked closely at MacKinnon.
“Eldred said just before he died that you shot him.”
David's brow wrinkled, but more in perplexity than surprise.
“I shot him?”
“That's it. His last words were that you shot him.”
Then David laughed in explosive surprise, without a trace of dismay. The officer was looking closely at him, not as an accusing official but with a curious wonder.
“Where were you this morning?”
“St. James. Been there since last evenin'. Why, any of 'em can tell you”—gesturing toward the group on the dock. “I was round McCann's dock all momin', waitin' for a tug to take me to Charlevoix.”
The sheriff nodded grimly.
“Then I guess it's up to her,” he said.
For a moment, David stared at him, and a strange creep went up his back.
“Her?”
“Yup. The girl. She's here, and she admits that she did it.”
A low moan escaped MacKinnon, and his hands, which had been thrust into his waistband, went down, to hang limply.
“She said that the minute Eldred was through sayin' it was you. She was alone at Squaw Island. Larsen was there, but she said he was asleep. They went after her and caught her in a skiff, rowin' back to the light from here. Guess it's all day with her. Funny, though, the way he tried to hang it on you!”
David hardly heard these words. Eve had killed her father! Eve was somewhere in the hands of the law. She had shot him down, and she must answer for that! And he—what he had done had brought this about? He heard himself talking rapidly. He had the sheriff by one arm, ripping out questions, expostulating.
“I don't know myself,” the man said, drawing away. “I've told you all I know. She wouldn't talk any more after she admitted it.”
THEN David was alone, the sheriff stalking up toward the big white house, and Aunt Jen came heavily up the dock. They did not see one of Eldred's boats, returning from its lift, entering the harbor with a Mackinaw boat in tow.
David did not hear what the woman said to him and neither had thought for their last meeting; but his own voice sounded large in his ears:
“It's Eve. She killed him!”
Jen went white and made as if to lift a hand to her face, but there was no strength in her arm.
“Oh, boy! Boy, she done that? It can't be! There's something wrong here. Why, she——”
“But they found her going back to the light in a small boat and she admitted it to the sheriff. She killed him. Oh, don't you know something that'll clear her?”
He put that last desperately, but Jen shook her head in helplessness.
“We was after you to take you back to her. We thought it was all right. She's learned what happened that last night she was on High Island. She thought you tricked her. Oh, boy, it's all right, and we come after you because she was waiting at the light for you, with her heart breaking and all. And now this has come to her! Where is she?”
“In the house, and the sheriff won't let me see her,” David replied, and rubbed his forehead with an unsteady hand.
Jen turned then and cried tremulously:
“Ned! Ned!”
David turned also, and that brought them facing down the dock to where the tug, with its sailboat in tow, was making fast. The men out there were in a compact knot, peering down into the mackinaw, and Ned Borden did not heed his wife's call as he looked at the frail figure that seemed to be sleeping in the cockpit until one saw the telltale smear of crimson on the thwart beneath it.
The intentness of this group, the way each face turned when the wheelman of the tug stepped ashore and began to explain what had happened caught the interest of MacKinnon and the woman, and they walked hastily out to join the curious.
“He was driftin' out there, half a mile off the island,” the man was saying. “Thought there wasn't anybody aboard until we run dost. Then we seen him, an' I thought he moved when I stepped in. But he didn't after that. Shot through here—see?”
He dropped into the mackinaw and drew the shirt from the scrawny chest of the old man so they could see the hole that had drilled his right lung.
“An' here's his gun”—holding up the ancient weapon. “Mebbe he shot hisself, 'cause one cartridge 'd been fired.”
“That's two this morning,” said somebody.
“Two!” The man looked up in amazement.
“Yeah. The feller you called king got his, too!”
But the surprise with which Eldred's men received this news was covered by the cry of Jen Borden, who had shouldered her way through the group and stood looking down at the body, its face now turned upward to the light, pitifully weak and old and drawn, with the white scar above the right eye whiter than the blanched, lifeless skin.
“It's Wetherby!” she cried tremulously, and reached out a hand to catch her husband's wrist and bring him closer. “Wetherby, Ned! Don't you see that scar? I've carried a picture of that face for years.” She straightened suddenly and searched out David. “Boy, had Eldred been shooting?”
In the silence that followed her sharp question, men stared at her fixedly. David did not speak, but Dimmock, who had joined the group, nodded slowly and said,
“He shot—once.”
They looked from Aunt Jen to him, and a murmur of consternation ran through the group as the woman put a hand on her husband's shoulder for support.
“It was Wetherby's hand, Neddie,” she said huskily, “guided by the hand of the Almighty!”
THE doctor was talking, holding the rusted revolver in one hand, the misshapen bullet which had taken Norman Eldred's life in the other.
“A forty-five, all right,” he said. “And the bullet that took the old chap's life there”—nodding toward the tarpaulin-covered body on the beach—“was steel-jacketed. That's what Eldred shot.” He turned to the sheriff. “How about it?”
The officer shook his head and said:
“That sure ought to satisfy anybody, but I can't figure out the girl. Here she comes. Clear out, you! If that's her father, as Mis' Borden says, she won't want you gawpin' here.”
Beside Aunt Jen, Eve, white of face, as though walking in a dream, passed the men, who streamed away from the beach. She did not look at them, nor did she see David standing beside the covered figure.
For a half-hour the older woman had been telling the story over and over, trying to make Eve understand that the suspicion she had brought on herself was mistaken, but the girl had not seemed to realize what was said. She sat in her own bedroom, a crouched, silent, cowering figure of a child, not manifestly frightened, not saddened, just dumb—dumb and without the ability of comprehending what was said to her. She had not even spoken to Jen Borden; her hand had not responded to the woman's clasp. And now Jen was bringing her out to walk in the frantic hope that movement might do what her supplication had failed to accomplish.
When opposite David, the girl's eyes turned and she stopped. One hand fluttered to her breast and lay there. She moistened her lips and tried to speak, but at first no sound came. The dulness of her eyes gave way to alarm and she caught her breath.
“David!” she whispered. “David! You didn't—get away?”
He came forward, impelled by her manner.
“No; I'm here. Eve. I came when I heard. I thought—maybe you'd let me help you.”
The girl stared at him and then looked at the woman, as though struggling to force her mind to function.
“But the sheriff! He thought—my father said——”
“I've talked to him. It's all right He knows where I've been all day.”
She withdrew her arm from Jen's clasp and went close to him.
“Then you didn't— It wasn't you?”
A great surge of understanding swept through him and he cried:
“That's why! That's why you took it on yourself—so I could get away! And if I'd been gone. Eve, maybe you would have paid. Oh, Eve, Eve!”
And she was in his arms, crying like a child, clinging to him, pressing her face against his breast, sobbing his name again and again, hanging to him desperately.
“They're looking,” muttered Jen. “They're staring at you, boy. Take her away.”
And as David led the girl toward the fringe of friendly cedars where she could sob unseen and unheard, where she could hear from his considerate lips enough of the story to make it clear, Jen turned to Ned Borden, who was approaching her.
“Neddie, it's all over but the smiling, which'll come after the tears. I've got to stay here a while, and I've got to have something to do. S'pose you can get my sewing-machine before night?”
IT WAS evening of the next day. In the west the sun was touching the lake, which lay like a mighty chalice of pale-amber wine. Above the horizon, a fleet of stately clouds reared cumulus plumes to majestic heights.
Eve and David stood on the beach, watching silently, elbows touching. In the house Aunt Jen was busy, and they could hear the drone of her sewing-machine in the silence.
That morning, the body of Eve's father had been carried from St. James up the King's Highway to Watch Hill and put to rest beside the sturdy church of Holy Rosary parish. When those who had followed it returned to Garden Island, Dimmock and others had completed another task—leveling the sand under the trees so not so much as a mound should remain to keep green the memory of the man who had been called king.
It was at this spot that the good priest from Beaver Island now stood, head bowed, his fine face lined with sorrow. But there was peace in his eyes and patience about his mouth as he made the sign of the cross and lifted his face to the glory of the west.
David looked about. The horizontal rays of the sun were striking through the trees, throwing the forest into contrasted light and deep she, and against the cool shadows the trilliums stood out like great flakes of snow, motionless on their long stems, placid faces toward the dropping sun. It was like a quiet garden. Garden Island was well named that evening, with the carpet of flowers beneath the clean green of new foliage, and as the boy looked, somewhere near by a whitethroat began its plaintive evening song.
Eve turned to follow his gaze. He heard her breath draw in slowly and slip out with a prolonged sigh. It was not an indication of trouble or regret, but as though those things which she had known in such weighty measure were slipping from her heart.
“If my father had come sooner, it wouldn't have been any better for him, would it, David?”
“No; you can't think of that. Eve. He was gone from the time your—mother died. It's all past, and you can't think of it, except to remember that after a blow there's bound to be fair weather.”
Her hand felt for his, and he gripped it and looked down into her face and then out across the harbor.
“Somehow, we'll get her rebuilt,” he said gently, and she knew he spoke of the Annabelle, his hooker that Eldred had burned to the water's edge. “We'll rebuild her and fit her out, and then we'll go, just you and I, wherever the wind takes us—Georgian Bay, the St. Lawrence, Superior and the Pictured Rocks. Wherever the wind or our fancy takes us, Eve—you and I alone, in a hooker that's a lady! If you want to come back, we will—in spring, when Garden Island's a garden, like it is now—we'll remember it like it is now—all fine and green with the flowers——”
Her hand tightened on his, and he looked down at the sweet, sweet smile on her face.
“That night on High Island—the night Mosseau waited for you—when I told you that bolts wouldn't hold me, and you wouldn't open the door. You held it shut; you said— You asked me if there wasn't somethin' I wanted to say first. What was it? What was it you wanted me to say?”
She turned to face him and lifted her arms to his shoulders. She gripped his flesh and held herself away from him so that she could look full into his face.
“I love you! I love you!”
That may have been reply to the question he had asked, and it may only have been that which had seethed in her heart through all those oddly crowded days. No matter. He took her in his arms and held her close, and their lips met in the first lingering kiss, and the good padre from St. James stopped his progress toward them and veered sharply and went through the soft sand on tiptoe toward the big house with long, glad steps, eyes twinkling through the mist that was in them.
THE END