# The Beloved Pawn (Everybody's Magazine 1922-23)/Part 1

Extracted from Everybody's Magazine Nov 1922, pp. 05-31.

### PART I

THE Beaver Islands lie crouched in the vigorous blue of Lake Michigan not far from where this inland sea surrenders its flow to the Straits of Mackinac. There are nine in all, ranging from Beaver Island itself, which is a dozen miles long by half as many at its greatest width, down to a boulder hummock showing above the shoals and designated on charts as Hat Island. To the westward of Beaver lies High Island, and beyond it little Gull. North and east from High, Trout, Whiskey and Squaw Islands punctuate an eight-mile line which brings the last named to the northward of the entire group. On the other flank—aside from tiny Hat—lies Hog Island in its big area of bright shallow water, and in the center of the group, the very heart of this archipelago, rests Garden Island, with its green forest, its safe harbor, its people.
To the northward, lean freighters ply from the straits for Poverty Island, Death's Door or other passages, Milwaukee or other ports above; to the eastward, luxurious passenger-vessels steam down past Skillagalee light toward Grand Traverse Bay, the Manitous, the east-shore cities and Chicago. All about and within sight of the Beavers is the come and go of to-day, and yet they are untouched by it. Their fish go out to feed cities; their sons go out to man ships, but little of the outer world reaches the islands, and their people fight the lake and the weather and the luck of fishermen, as their fathers did before them.
It was so in the beginning, when those intrepid French explorers saw the great uninhabited island sprawling there in uncharted water, a score of miles and more from the untraveled mainland, with a hook like a flat tail making a harbor at its lower end, and named it Isle de Castor. They were the first whites to set foot there likely. What they did is forgotten, and even the isolated name they gave has now been Anglicized. Then, generations later, came King Strang with his Mormon followers, and dominated and persecuted and died violently where gentle ripples lap the shining beach round which now stretches the village of St. James. The Irish followed and fought the dead Strang's influence and stamped it out and established themselves and their culture; they still persist. Other sects than the Mormons have thrived and perished in the isolation of the group. The native Indian still transports his dead across many miles of water to insure unbroken rest in the quiet of the islands. Strange men have sought the goodly seclusion offered. Lore has endured; fictions have become fact; generation has given way to generation without developing the impulse to change the Beavers. And King Norman has ruled on Garden Island.
When that other man who called himself a king came here, it was with a measure of pomp and dignity. He had followers; he had the driving purpose of religious fanaticism, but when King Norman came, it was without the fervor of a pilgrim seeking new soil for his faith and deeds, without a follower except the shy little girl with the great blue eyes and blue-black hair, her face whitened by infancy spent in a convent school, and the sooty-faced ruffian in the fire-hole of the rickety tug which Eldred wheeled out of the straits himself—for that was all men called him when he came: Norman Eldred.
It was spring, with the net-stakes just going in when he appeared. They saw him come into Beaver Harbor, pass the light, skirt the docks, standing on the stem with hands clasped lightly behind his back, head bowed and shoulders sagged a trifle, as though the head, so held, were a great weight for them. The girl, Eve, was at the wheel, and she peered out at St James almost as though it might be a hostile village. They swung past the last dock and went back into the lake, discarding the only settlement on all the islands as a stopping-place. Eldred explored the remainder of the group and finally dropped his anchor in Indian Harbor and went ashore on Garden Island, where no whites lived and where the Indians were few and scattered.
A log house stood close to the beach in not bad repair, and Eldred and his red-haired helper, Dimmock, made this habitable. Net-reels went up, and within a week he was established with a suggestion of permanence, had twine set and was lifting. He was ragged; the child's face was pinched with privation; his tug was hardly seaworthy—a tramp fisherman, but there was that about him in his silences, the strength of his great body, his alternate quickness and deliberation which made men know he would not fail.
He did not fail anywhere, unless one considers his relations with other men and believes that respect and friendship are desired possessions. The next spring found him with another boat and more luck, and his fortune with fishing held until his fleet numbered six, and thirty men lived in the slab shacks he built behind his net-reels. These men were called the scum of the lakes, and they were no more than just that—hard men only would work for King Norman, and that seemed to feed his strange pride; he wanted only hard and rough men.
He built the big white house where he lived with his daughter; he handled fish for the few Indians and built a store where they and his men traded; he made his harbor a shipping-point and was not dependent on any other port.
He was a friend to no one. In the first place, his manner of speech and action were different, lifting him above usual men and making a barrier against acquaintances. When a few tried to penetrate his strangeness and reserve, they were repulsed ungently, and that made Eldred singular; but it was when Jode MacKinnon came across from Big Bay de Noc to fish the waters off the island, and seemed for a time to get along with the newcomer only to meet with tragedy, that men realized there was something horrible about this man. Most of them shunned him, and those who tried to cross him only encountered disaster, and before long it was recognized that the only way to maintain peace was to allow Eldred his way.
The good priest then at St. James, reading casually in a book on genealogy, came across the name of Eldred. It is Anglo-Saxon and means “the Terrible.” “He is well named,” the father said, and men echoed that. Eldred the Terrible! He was no less, surely.
AND all this time the girl was growing. The pinched look left her face; she developed into a slender, erect, wonderful young woman, her eyes the color of the lake on a June morning, her soft skin mellowed by clean winds, her hair as black—as her father's heart, men said. She kept much to herself and always she went with her father on his rare trips to St. James or CHarlevoix or into the straits, and then she was stared at curiously. She was King Norman's daughter and that would have been enough without the stories—even the story of what she helped do to Jode MacKinnon.
There was love in Eldred for the girl, a fierce passion showing when he let his gaze linger on her face and seeming more in evidence when others were about who also looked at her. It was the hunger of his heart reflecting itself in his eyes—hunger and jealousy.
Yes; jealousy was there, and well proven. Eve was beginning to mature when Eldred brought from far down the state a spinster school-teacher to keep his house and go on with the girl's education. Eve took to the lessons with that eagerness which is the first creation of monotony, and it was only a few days before she found in the woman herself at least as great an interest. Then, without explanation, the woman was sent away, and Anna John, a paunchy squaw, was brought in to keep the house.
Stories of the girl became part of the Eldred tradition. To her, Eldred had given the responsibility of the store, and it was there, with just the counter between them, that she had her only contacts with the men of the crew. Otherwise, they kept away from her because, whenever a new man came to work, Eldred gave him but one instruction: “You will talk to my family only when spoken to. Dimmock will give you other orders.” But when they did meet Eve in the store, she showed hostility, a coldness, a superior indifference. With a girl of her beauty on the one hand and men such as they on the other, there could not help being danger, and it was to forestall this that Eldred made the rule which gave men no opportunity to be sly. An indiscreet word, even an uncautious look, and punishment was forthcoming. Such punishment! Those beatings which Eldred had given men were tales to tell, indeed. For her attitude of being of better clay, and because the urge which she touched in all men only meant danger, she was disliked, ridiculed foully when men were in safe company, and made the central figure of many an astonishing yarn.
Some of these stories told about Eve had the background of probability and the evidence of witnesses; many others were vague, conflicting tales of harshness and cruelty. But regardless of their intrinsic worth, they were remembered and retold and passed on until King Norman's daughter became an outstanding figure, to be shunned as her father was shunned; and if this had not been so, if people had been skeptical of the things that were said of her, they would have ceased much of their doubtings when the story seeped over the lake that she, as a little girl, had had a part in the thing which happened to Jode MacKinnon. It was likely, if one accepted the character which Eldred's men gave to Eve, and it dovetailed with the story that Jode's helper left behind him when he fled from Garden Island and to the mainland, to get as far away as he could from the spirit he had seen flaming in Eldred's eyes that night on the beach, with the surf roaring in across the reef and wreckage coming ashore.
And so King Norman ruled, sufficient unto himself, with the commerce of an every-day world slipping past his dominion, amassing wealth, making his position more secure, the great passion for the girl growing with the years, standing now and again on the decks of his tugs as they passed the lake ships, the broad brim of his black, round-crowned hat blown back, hands clasped lightly behind him, head forward—truly a kingly figure, powerful, aloof, unchallenged. And Eve became a woman, knowing only Garden Island and its life—her father, who was called a king, and the men of his crew, who were called the scum of the lakes.
THE time was early May, but there was little spring in the gale which rushed down from the northwest, sending great gray seas heaving across Lake Michigan, clipping their dingy crests and bearing the spray along in a scud to mingle with the falling snow and make the weather thick as night. It wailed through the naked trees of Garden Island and swept on into the murk beyond with a steady, hungry roar—the hunting-cry of savage weather.
Smoke poured from the chimneys of the shacks where the crew smoked about stoves to keep off the chill. The beach was deserted, and Eldred's fleet, tied nose to stem along the wharf before his long net-house, seemed to snuggle close, as though conscious of their luck in being there, safe.
It was no day for craft or men to stir, but craft were on the lake, and there was at least one on Garden Island who had braved the weather.
EVE ELDRED crouched in the shelter of balsams that grew on the beach beyond the buildings, protected from the cold by a flaming red Mackinaw jacket, gray skirt and laced boots. On her head was a yellow oilskin hat, its strap fitted snugly beneath her chin. Beside her, a gaunt mongrel dog squatted on his haunches, ears erect, bright eyes fast on the harbor entrance. The girl spoke excitedly.
“Another boat. Friend! They can't make it; they've got to get shelter.”
She watched the distressed gasoline-boat that lurched into sight, rolling heavily while it nosed its way into the channel and straightened out for the run across the reef.
“That's the supply-boat from the light,” she said, as though the dog could understand. “They've been to St. James and can't get back.”
She watched the boat come into the quiet water of the harbor and make for the dock, and then she sank back to her heels with some of the enthusiasm gone from her face.
“Maybe the keeper's wife's aboard. I'd like to talk to a woman again,” she said dully. “There's Gam Gallagher out there”—looking toward a fishing-boat that now swung at anchor, after having put in with its motor working erratically. “He couldn't get home. That's the only reason he came here. That's the only reason anybody comes. He looks nice, too.”
She rose to her feet with a sigh and shoved a loose strand of hair back under the hat, then parted the branches that concealed her and looked up toward the big white house. There was in her face a childish quality, a gentleness and a timidity that would have made one who had listened to the stories about her pause and consider.
A voice whipped past her on the gale, and the sounds of heavy feet. She crouched again quickly, a hand on the dog's neck, and remained so until the men had entered the nearest shack, when she relaxed slowly and stood up, watching the harbor where people were—people she did not know and would like to talk to.
She had always wanted to know about people, but ever since she could well remember there had been barriers to that; besides, there had been so few opportunities that the longing for new friends which had once been high in her heart had lost much of its reality. Her experience in the convent had been strange and rigid and unreal; impulses which were inherent had been repressed, and she had looked on her departure from the place with her father as liberation. She had been patient, and her patience had been rewarded by the coming of Jode MacKinnon, and that luxury had ended with such a shock. Then more waiting and wondering and wanting; and the school-teacher had arrived and been sent away before the girl could wholly comprehend that this delight of companionship was hers. Thereafter she settled to the waiting again, and occasionally questioned her father, for her patience was not as steady as it was once; but he gave her no satisfaction—just talked vaguely about people who were envious and inferior.
The impulse to keep away from the men who worked on the island was a newer thing than this loneliness. When she was a little girl, it had been her father's warnings that had kept her to herself, but after she developed and passed that divide which brought her into womanhood, she needed no warning other than that in her heart. She had to meet them in the store, and that was all her courage could bear.
Perhaps there was little danger from most of them, but her distrust of all men had grown lately.
Particularly of one, a Frenchman, Jean Mosseau. He had never spoken to her except when he bought things in the store, but he watched—watched so steadily and so knowingly, as though his eyes were saying things which she did not understand. He would loaf in the shadows of the store and keep his bright eyes on her until she felt chills up her back and flushes in her cheeks. When she walked near the beach where he was at work, she could feel him looking, looking after her; even when she was with her father and Mosseau was within sight, she could sense that his eyes were on her face when Eldred was not watching. The Frenchman had been in the woods lately getting out stakes for the nets, and Eve, had kept near the house because of it, but now his task was about through, she knew, and soon she would feel free to go back there through the forest. That would help, for it was spring and things were growing. Anyhow, she told herself now, perhaps Mosseau was no more dangerous than any other; surely he had never transgressed——
The dog beside her whined and stiffened.
“What's— Oh, another boat!”
A thrill was back in her voice, and her eyes were animated as she stepped clear of the trees to see a hooker wallowing in through the buoys like a thing in conscious agony. It was a small schooner, flying a jib only, and with the tattered remnants of a foresail snapping from the gaff. She was heeled low under that rag, and, in her fresh white paint, she looked like a ghost ship coming from the grayness of fading daylight, now touched by a faint luminosity—a ghost, but a jaunty ghost, for her rs had a fine rake and the tilt of her slender bowsprit was nothing less than saucy.
ON THE deck was a lone figure clinging to the wheel, bowed over as though fighting against sickness. The man moved sluggishly; the jaunty clipper bow, splitting the sullen water of the harbor, swung up; the spars lost some of their pitch, and she lode on even keel into the shelter.
The canvas flapped as the man let go lines and stumbled forward. He nearly fell, but caught at the shrouds and kept on to the bow, where a kedge-anchor lay. It required great, awkward efforts for him to get it to the rail, but he succeeded and let it go, and the chain ran out with a sound lost in the hubbub of weather. The hook bit the bottom; the slack went out of the cable; the hooker stopped short with a dip of her nose and a slatting of the jib, and the man, bulky in oilskins, worked with the halyards. The sail came down jerkily and lay untidily in the bow, flopping like a wounded wing. The man bent over, made a momentary effort to furl and pitched forward to the deck.
An inarticulate exclamation broke from the girl's parted lips. The man lay where he had fallen, moving slowly in a struggle to regain his feet.
“Friend, he brought her in alone, and out of that,” the girl said. “Why, he may be hurt; he may need—” She checked herself, irresolute; then, with a jerk of the head and a quick look about, she said, with something like doggedness in her tone, “Well, somebody's got to go.”
She trotted swiftly along the beach to where a yawl was drawn up, shoved it off and stood in the stem and sculled deftly toward the hooker, while Friend, his paws on the gunwale, watched the man who had fallen crawl slowly aft, laboriously open the scuttle of the cabin companionway and half slide, half fall from view.
At that, the girl stopped sculling and looked back at the beach. No figure stirred, and in the lighted window of the big house she could see her father's shadow. She again made that somehow defiant movement of her head, sent her boat alongside the hooker, made the painter fast and scrambled aboard.
On deck she stood still a moment, listening. No sound but the yelp of the wind in the rigging and the heavy flop of the neglected sail. She went to the open companionway.
“Down there!” she called, and waited. “Are you all right?”
No reply for a moment; then a stir and an incoherent mumbling. She moved as if to step to the ladder, hesitated and then, as a half-choked moan came upward, slipped down the narrow steps. Everything was dark, but when she stood still, she could sense a figure stirring near her feet.
“Are you hurt?” she asked again.
Then a man's voice, strained and weak:
“No. Strike this match—will you?”
She felt a hand waving uncertainly before her and grasped it. The flesh was stiff and wet and very cold, but in the fingers was a bunch of matches. She struck one and held it high. His sou'wester was off, and she had a flash of a white face, half-closed eyes, a mouth that drooped with exhaustion. He was propped against a bunk and was trying to smile as he struggled to get up. The indecision which had been on the girl from the time she came aboard vanished. This man could hurt no one.
A lamp hung in gimbals at Eve's shoulder, and she lighted it, heart hammering, then looked down at the man again as he floundered to his feet and sank back on the bunk. She had seen men come off the lake before with their vitality sapped by wind and cold. She knew what it meant, and looked about quickly. A tiny galley-stove was there, with kindling in a box.
“Stay there,” she said. “I'll fix you up. It's quicker than taking you ashore.” But her tone on that last implied that, under no circumstances, would she have taken him ashore.
She dropped to her knees, struck the match and leaned low. Her young face was very earnest as she waited for the wood to ignite. A tendril of flame crept up and wavered and caught and grew, shooting a warm glow into her face, and with a whiff of satisfaction she closed the door, leaned back and looked at the man.
He was staring at her with a dull sort of wonder, an expression which, without the cloud of half-consciousness, might have been amazement. When she moved, that passed, and his head drooped.
“Much obliged,” he muttered.
He could not help himself, so she fumbled at the snaps of his oilskin and opened it.
“Can you take it off?” He nodded and grunted and tried and failed. She seized the sleeve and pulled it from his arm, saying: “You can't do anything; you're all gone— Why, you're wet! You've been overboard!”
“Overboard,” he muttered. “Damned cold!” Speech and movement, though they drew on his strength, seemed to clear the man's faculties. “Lucky you're here. Lay hold those boots, will you? Can't bend to 'em. Then put on some coffee—if you will——”
Eve dropped to her knees and tugged at the boots, which spilled water across the floor as they came off, and then she turned to the cupboard behind the tiny stove, found the pot hanging there and coffee on a shelf.
“Obliged,” he murmured, running a hand through his light hair and watching her as though he wanted to force the stiff flesh of his face into a smile. “I'll get along—now——”
The girl hesitated.
“You're pretty weak. You— I'll stand by on deck until you get changed.”
She slipped up the ladder and walked to the rail, watching the shore while Friend nosed her hand. Figures were moving in her father's house, and she frowned.
Soon she heard his voice:
“On deck, there! All right!”
She went below, leaving the dog at the top of the ladder, and found him barefooted but in dry shirt and trousers, hunched over the stove, shivering. He turned his face and smiled this time, and shuddered again as the chill which lake water had put in his bones convulsed him.
Eve loosened her jacket, for the place had warmed very quickly, and watched the man as he rubbed his forehead. He was like his cabin—neat and compact. He was young. His shoulders were broad; his hands and feet were large and competent. He had youth and vitality.
“Were you alone?” she asked.
“Alone—thank God!”
“And where did you come from a day like this?”
“Somewhere west of lee.” He laughed feebly.
“You mean you lost your bearings?”
“That's it—lost. Everything all right above?” he asked.
“All snug; you did it.”
He made a sound that was like a laugh.
“I didn't know. I didn't remember. I thought the Annabelle was all through. Saw some buoys—an' a boat standin' in. My head wouldn't work—not much.”
He rubbed the palm across his eyes unsteadily. For a time, silence. He shivered again and hugged his body with his strong arms, crouching closer to the warmth. The coffee boiled over with a sharp hiss, and Eve, snatching it up, poured a thick cup full of the scorching drink.
“Obliged—thanks! Ah, that chases the cold!” He held the cup in his two hands and sipped it noisily. Until it was half gone—and he drank very slowly—no further words were spoken.
FINALLY the man began to talk, gaze unfocused before him, a grim smile on his lips.
“Whisky and water—they won't mix; not a lot of whisky an' a—lakeful of water. A man's a fool to try it.” He laughed shortly and drank again. “Last thing I remember last night was tryin' to stay sober enough to get gas before I pulled out of Escanala. Handle her anywhere alone with the kicker. Next thing, I was outside Poverty Island passage with the tank dry an' a squall bustin' out of the no'thwest with me alone to get canvas on her.”
He twisted his head seriously.
“Kind God, how it blew! Me workin' alone with foam comin' aboard so's you could hardly see the length of her. I did it, though! Got her under way an' then didn't dare try to get back into a lee because it was snowin' so hard. Headed for Beaver Island, thinkin' I could get across with it on my quarter, all right. Thought the wind 'd hauled after the squall settled to a blow, an' didn't find out till the fo'sail blew out that I'd dropped my clasp-knife under the compass-box an' threw her off a half-dozen points. Sailed that way Lord knows how long!”
He drank again and rubbed his head and laughed.
“That was when I went overboard, after th' fo'sail went into ribbons. Lord—can feel it yet! Squeezes breath out of you like you'd squeeze the life out of a frog. Lucky day, though. Line hangin' over the rail; caught it with one hand an' got back——
“Cold? Never knew what the word meant before! Wind and snow. Seemed I'd sailed for weeks. Couldn't think; could only keep goin'. Seas broke up once, an' knew I was in shoal water, but couldn't help myself. Then, after I hadn't seen anything but that rag of a jib for years, she lift a bit an' I saw a boat headin' in here, away off. Just a glimpse, just a second, but it was a good bet, so I come on an' picked up some buoys—an' here I am!”
He emptied his cup and held it out for more. Eve poured it out, and as she put the pot back on the stove-edge, a scratch and whining came from above.
“My dog,” she explained. “Be still, Friend!”
This quieted the dog, and when she looked at the man, his eyes, fighting off the fog in them, were on her and he was smiling slightly.
“Funny name for a dog. Friend.”
“He's the only one I've got.” She smiled, too, but there was no lightness in her voice.
“That so? You deserve a lot of 'em.”
His manner was reassuring, and the girl, in whose face had appeared a flash of caution, flushed and looked away.
“An hour ago-out there, thinkin' I'd be all done any minute; an' now—snug, with a nice girl to help me.” The dog scratched at the scuttle again. “Must be nice to be your friend—an' follow you round.”
That was not boldness—would not have been, Eve was sure, had he possessed all his strength. Her face lighted quickly, but shyness came, and when the man reached for the coffee-pot himself, she turned toward the ladder with something of the same alarm which had come upon her when she heard the men passing her vantage-point on the beach. Then the man looked at her over the cup's rim, and she was struck again by something in his eyes which thrilled her as only the stirring of old and pleasant memories can thrill. Her gaze fell off and deeper color came into her cheeks.
“Goin'?” he asked.
“Yes. It's late and—you're all right.”
“To-morrow—say, to-morrow, maybe you'll let me say how obliged I am.”
“Perhaps,” said a bit breathlessly, and started up the ladder, impelled to run—not from fright, from stimulus.
Friend pounced on her, and she put him away and turned as the man hailed her again.
“Say, what place is this? Where'd the lake throw me?”
She looked down.
“Why, didn't you know? This is Garden Island.”
“Garden Island!” she heard him mutter. “You mean this is—Eldred's harbor?”
“Of course. Ours is the only harbor here.”
“And you? Who are you?”
“Why, I'm Eve Eldred.”
She loosed her painter, dropped into the yawl and sculled away. To-morrow! He wanted to thank her to-morrow!
THE cup from which the man had been drinking went from his hand. It did not drop. Had it dropped, it would not have broken, for it was very heavy. Instead, it crashed to bits under the stove, clear across the cabin. His breath sucked in audibly and came out again in a sound of disgust.
“Hell! Tossed in here! An' her hands help me!"
He grimaced, as though the drink the girl had made for him was bitter on his tongue.
THE lighthouse supply-boat, which had attempted to run from St. James back to its station on Squaw Island only to be driven into Indian Harbor by the blow, carried two people, a man and a woman. The man was Ned Borden, keeper of the light, and the woman was his wife, Jenny, who had a rating of second assistant keeper in the service. It was their first trip back to St. James after the opening of the light a month before.
Borden had stood by the motor while they ran across the reef, and the woman, though her hands gripped the spokes of the wheel firmly enough, had seemed less concerned with her course than with what might be revealed once they gained their shelter. She swung the boat in a wide circle for the dock and brought it alongside with a bump and a list, for her eyes had scanned beach and buildings closely as though on the watch for some definite thing at the cost of a handy landing.
Borden entered the house after putting out the lines and eyed the pile of boxes abaft the motor.
“Plenty to eat, shelter from the weather, mail to read—we're as snug as a bug in a—spider's web,” he said drolly. His wife was still gazing shoreward. “It's an evil place; but you're not going to worry, are you, Jenny?”
“Worry!” she burst out in a large, gruff voice. “Blistering Moses. It'd take a flock of black devils like this one to make me lose any sleep. I'm just curious about that girl.”
Borden took up a lantern.
“She must be a queer one,” he said, as he struck a match. “Seems like everybody hates her without any reason, unless just because she's Eldred's daughter. 'Course, there's that story about her and the beacons, and that's— Sounds far fetched to me; but all the others they tell seem to be moonshine. There's a lot of wickedness in the world for sure, but when people tell stories such as they tell about this girl. I'm always a doubter.”
He put the burnt match carefully in his pocket and hung up the lantern, adjusting the wick with squinting eyes.
“At that,” he went on, “she may be pretty bad. If there's anything to the story of that man MacKinnon and her hand in it, shows she's pretty hard-hearted for a girl.”
“But she was only a baby,” protested his wife.
“Sure! That's so. Well, it ain't much matter, Jenny, but in ten years I've never known you to be so curious about anybody.” The woman looked at him sharply as he turned away from the lantern, as though to detect some expected and half-feared expression on his face, but it was passive, a gentle face, wide brow, thin lips, steady eyes; strength and tenderness were there at once. He picked up a newspaper and shook out the folds. “I'd say these people were good for just one thing—to let alone.”
His wife turned to a window which, with the gloom on one side and the lantern-light on the other, made an imperfect mirror. She straightened her hat, a wide, high-crowned affair of brown straw with one stiff feather stabbing backward.
“I don't see how you ever learned so much as you have, Ned Borden,” she boomed. “If your appetite wasn't any bigger'n your curiosity, you'd 've starved to death forty years ago. The only way I can find out things is to find out about folks.”
“The world would be better off if it knew less about some people,” he said, and then, with a tolerant smile, altered his dictum. “Or, the world would be better off if there wasn't so much to know about some people.”
Jenny grunted in response, and then for a time was busy with the many packages, opening pieces of dress-goods and examining them carefully in the lantern-light, rubbing a thumb critically over the fabric, stretching it, shaking out other pieces.
“Wisht my Up-to-Date had come,” she muttered once. “Ain't got a rag to my back and don't know no more about what they're going to wear than a bumblebee does about cooking.” But with all her evident interest in her purchases, there was a measure of abstraction, as though her mind might be concerned elsewhere, and when some time had passed, she smoothed the skirts of her coat and sighed ponderously and announced,
“My underpinning's all full of cramps; guess I'll go ashore."
Ned looked over the top of his paper.
“Here, Jenny? Don't you want me——”
“Jiminy fish-hooks! I guess I got along on and around and over and through these blasted lakes for forty years without a guardian, and I don't intend starting in to be a weak and leaning stalk now. Stick your blessed nose back into the news of two weeks back Thursday. I'm going to give this corner of hell a look at a righteous woman!”
She lumbered up the steps of the companion-ladder then, while the man watched her go with a twinkle in his eyes. When she had closed the door, he craned his neck to see her walk along the dock toward shore, scanning the beach thoroughly. No one was in sight, and he went back to his paper.
Jenny Borden was a large woman, large of limb and girth and feature, and her walk was normally heavy and measured, but when she stepped from the dock planking to the sand, her movements became somewhat lighter. She awkwardly achieved a degree of stealth.
She passed the shacks where the crew lived and the boarding-house where a cook worked over his stove and went up the path toward the big house, a faint hulk of white in the darkness now. At the steps she paused and scanned the windows. The one light that showed was on Eldred's desk, and she could see him bent forward beside it. She went up to the veranda carefully, walking on the balls of her feet, and, with a good view of the room, scanned it quickly. A fire burned in a great fire place, and Eldred was alone, writing.
She released the latch so carefully that it made no sound and stepper! inside with out betraying her presence. Before closing the door, however, she spoke, standing there with a hand gripping the knob.
“Hello, Ed Lasker!”
AT her words, his pen stopped. Then he turned slowly to look at her.
“Good-evening," he said in his rich, heavy voice. “You are mistaken. My name is Eldred.”
At that the woman closed the door ungently and walked toward him, stopping beside his desk, arms akimbo.
“Don't try that with me, Lasker!” Her voice trembled. “Look at me! Do you know who I am?"
She saw light-points leap in his eyes.
“My name is Eldred.” he insisted. “As for knowing you——”
“My name is Borden,” she interrupted in tart mimicry of his deliberate manner. “Jen Borden, Aunt Jen, 'Red' Jenny Avery that was. Now do you know me?”
He nodded.
“Your face, yes"—ironically. “I knew that from the first. Your rashness was confusing. All people who come here know who I am, and you always were—discreet.”
“King Norman Eldred!" she scoffed. “Yes; we know each other. There ain't any mistake.”
A pause, while she eyed him, breathing rapidly. Then he put down his pen and clasped his white, hair-tufted hands in his lap, sitting back in the chair with a sardonic smile.
“Red Jenny," he said ever so softly, and laughed, lifting his chin a bit. “Red Jenny, with the red gone to silver now—the faded rose, with age dulling its judgment!” The woman stirred and moistened her lips. “Of course, I knew you were on the light—as I know everything.”
“Everything?”—contemptuously.
He gave no heed to this, but said:
“I am honored by this call. Won't you sit down?” He rose, with an ironical bow.
“Not under this roof!”
He lowered his head again, this time in mock humility.
“Very well. Red Jenny—Jen Borden—Mrs. Borden. How long have you been married to this particular man?”
“He's the first, which you'd 've known if you know everything. Ten years I've been married and in the service, keeping sailors off shoals instead of leading 'em into foul water!”
“Ten years,” he repeated musingly. “And ten years of—of peace, Jenny?”
“Peace and happiness, thank God! Ten years with a real man, Lasker, a good man!”
“A good man—a Christian, I understand. You are fortunate. I would have said there were few who could have made you happy—or would have.”
Her face worked at the sting of his implication, but she said humbly enough:
“Only that sort would, Lasker. Only that sort, with great hearts and clean minds and the grace to overlook blunders.”
Her voice gave a trifle and, in a flash, his eyes, which had only mocked and leered, were prying—prying——”
“He has overlooked, then?”
“Everything! Do you think I'd hide a thing from a man like that?”
The man's eyes searched her face when her gaze fell, and a smile touched his lips.
“Remarkable!” he said under his breath, and laughed. Then, “And you came here to see me!”
“Don't fool yourself! You know why I come here. Five years ago I satisfied myself who King Norman was; for five years I pulled wires and schemed and planned to get us transferred to this district and this light. Not to see you, Lasker—to see—her.”
“And do you think you will?” he asked almost slyly, and smiled again.
“Think I will? Do I think I will, Lasker? Do you think I won't? Oh, you don't know women, Lasker! You don't know what that meant to me, that girl, the first decent thing that come into my life! For twenty years I've felt her baby body in my arms; for twenty years I've heard her saying those first little words; for twenty years I've thought about rocking her at night and picking her up in the morning again. For twenty years my arms have been empty and my heart hungry— And you think I won't see her now, Lasker?”
HE HAD started to turn away, but on that last he whirled savagely.
“Eldred!” he said between clenched teeth. “Eldred for you as well as for the rest of the world, Red Jenny.” He advanced menacingly and stopped, poised above her, held the pose a moment and relaxed suddenly. “That much for that!”
Jen Borden laughed then.
“And that's why I'll see her! That's why I'll know her again, 'cause I know' more than anybody knows—but you. Oh, you're a devil, Lasker! But you brought something into my life that was sweet and good; you tried to take it away and you did; but you couldn't take the feel of her away, nor make me stop wanting her back.” Her voice shook, and she spoke with great difficulty. “That was the thing that made me fit to be the wife of a good man—and it was strong enough to make me work to get near her, where I could see her.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and the man smiled.
“And your disappointment will pay for your presumption,” he said lowly.
The hand holding the handkerchief remained clenched before her chin.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You. are dense, Red Jenny. When I took her out of your life, it was final. When I brought her here, it was to keep her for myself—only. When I made myself what men call a king, it was for her—to keep her close, to keep her away from everybody!”—voice dropping to a stressed whisper. He paused; then: “Can you understand that? You talk about the love of women; you don't know the love of men. You talk about the feel of a child in your arms; you're ignorant—you know nothing of the sight of a child becoming a woman under your eyes, and the walking image of another. Share her? Share her with you? I'd sooner—lose than share her!”
He drew a deep breath, squaring his shoulders, and his eyes, on the woman's frightened face, were wide and evil.
“It is a good thing you came so early. Perhaps we can understand each other. Let it be the last time you come to my island, Red Jenny; let to-night be the last time you ever hope to see Eve. Men here will tell you I'm not to be fooled with, and I will tell you this: She is life to me; she is the object in keeping on. I've risked everything for her, and there's nothing for me to lose in trying to keep her. I will not give her up; I will not share her—not so much as a chance acquaintance!”
“Lasker, you for——”
“Eldred!” he corrected in a shout. “Eldred, for the rest of your life!”
“Eldred be blamed!” Her burst of temper was as hot as his. “You're Lasker for me to my last breath. I don't forget. I've kept my mouth shut, but I don't forget. The people of Port Bruce don't forget, either. Wetherby's alive, and he ain't forgot. That makes you squirm? All I have to do is open my mouth and tell the story and——”
“Then your good Christian husband will know,” he broke in.
It was like an unexpected blow. The woman tried to go on and stammered helplessly. She saw his leering mirth and heard his laugh.
“'Ten years of happiness, thank God!'” he quoted. “And now, for another ten, you can thank Norman Eldred!”
“Lask——”
“Eldred!”
“Eldred, then”—weakly. “What are you driving at?”
“At your secret, which you betray so clumsily.” He chuckled, toying with a watch-charm fashioned from a Petoskey agate in the shape of a fish. “You never were a good liar, Jenny; you bluster too easily when you try to deceive. You've told him everything, eh?”
“Everything”—in a whisper, catching at the desk corner.
“Told him of our little transaction? He had heard and he has forgiven?”
“Of course! Do you think——”
“Let me meet him, then. He might——”
“For God's love, Lasker, not that!”
“Eldred!” he corrected, mockingly. Their gazes clung a moment, his derisive and triumphant, and strength went from the woman's; it wavered, and he made a soft sound that might have been the echo of a laugh. “And when you schemed and pulled wires to get here, he did not know; and now, if he guessed why you are here, what would he say to that?”
She lifted her face to his and studied it with something like awe.
“You're a devil—a black devil,” she repeated faintly. “You always could guess what was in folk's minds. I—I'll trade with you. Las—Eldred; I'll keep on keeping my mouth shut. I'll keep our secret, yours and mine. Listen, Eldred; what would 'ave become of Eve if I hadn't loved her first? If it hadn't been for me— Why, I might 'ave had her now with me with nothing to hide. If she's been the one thing in life for you, ain't I got any rights?
“I'll—I'll keep my cowardly tongue between my teeth; I'll say nothing that'll set her to wondering, but I want a part of her, Eldred—just a little part.” Tears were in her eyes and voice, and the one hand, holding the ball of handkerchief, was held out in appeal. “It means so much—to an old woman like me. And haven't I helped you? Don't I deserve something for what I done—for giving you the only thing you had to live for?”
Her voice was wretched with heartache, with pleading, and her extended hand trembled, but the man only laughed—low and mockingly.
“I'm not ungrateful. I've told you what she means to me; you've made your claim. Now it is my turn to share, to give something in return——”
“Thank God, Lasker!”
“And I do. Another ten years of silence, which means another ten years of happiness for Red Jenny.”
“Oh, you wont do that! You'll let me see her, Lasker! You'll——”
He made a quick gesture of dismissal, and she could see a glint of teeth through his beard.
“No exceptions! She is for me alone. If this blow drops by morning, you leave my harbor; if it holds, you keep to your boat. Do I make myself clear?”
He towered above her, all cruel strength, and the woman let the one hand drop limply to her side. There the red fist clenched and a tremor ran through her bulky body. She lifted her face to speak again, but before words could come a step sounded and Eve came into the room.
SHE stood still, looking first at her father and then at the woman. She saw, at first, only a stranger, and that—finding her there in the house—was startling enough; but it was not this which caused her to check the movement that would have closed the door. It was the expression on the woman's face—tender, gentle, amazed, hungry—yes; hungry—not the hunger for possession but the hunger for service, the hunger to help.
They stood so for a fraction of a moment only, and then Eldred spoke to Jen Borden.
“We understand one another”—stiffly. “It is unfortunate your time has been wasted. Good-evening.”
She turned to confront him once more, fresh courage in her heart and words bursting at her lips, but she read in his face such a blazing fury, such a destroying threat that her heart failed and she drew away, frightened and beaten. Eve had stopped in the center of the room, and as the woman moved toward the door she gave one more long look at the girl; then, on the threshold, she turned and flashed at King Norman,
“Some day my cowardly heart 'll find a little starch, and when it does——”
“It will be interesting—very interesting,” he broke in, as he turned away.
The woman's chin trembled, more in anger than in broken spirit, but when it seemed as though she were about to speak once more, her breath caught and she turned and went abruptly out. On the veranda, she stood a moment, peering through the glass at the girl who watched her; then she disappeared.
Eldred, again at his desk, stared blankly at the paper on which he had been writing, breath held short as he strained his ears for word or movement from Eve. When she spoke, it was in a low tone of puzzlement.
“Father, who is that woman?”
There was something savage in the abruptness with which he faced her.
“No one you should know!”
His unusual fierceness startled the girl, wiped the questioning look from her eyes, and when he saw this, he softened.
“No one you should know,” he repeated less emphatically. “She was called 'Red Jenny' years ago, and was notorious on the lakes. She's the wife of the light-keeper now. She ran a sailor's boarding-house in Buffalo—a hell-hole. She thinks she has a claim against me that I owe her. I have told her not to come near you again.”
“Near me? Did she come here to see me?”
“You? No”—with a shake of his head and a brief laugh. “But you are here, and she's not fit to walk the same land.”
Eve said rather absently,
“And she seemed so—so motherly!”
Angry lights flared in his eyes.
“Motherly!” he scoffed. “She's—She's—” It seemed there was no expletive which could convey his contempt. He eyed his daughter angrily and then looked at Friend, who had slipped into the room with his mistress. “Put that dog out!” he said heavily and left the room.
WHEN she was alone in the room, with Friend outside and staring at her through the long glass in the door, Eve drew her outer garments off slowly and stared with abstraction into the blazing logs. Her brows were slightly gathered, and for a moment she stood so, dejected and puzzled, and after that short interval she turned and moved across the room.
It was a big, barren room, with white plaster, uncurtained windows, and the floor was bare except for rag rugs of squaw manufacture. The furniture was of unstained wood and massive in structure. There was one shelf of books above the roll-top desk.
On all the wall-space was but one picture, a framed photograph, and before this the girl stopped, searching the gentle face of the likeness as though pleading for understanding. Seeing the two together, there was no mistaking that this was a photograph of her mother.
For several minutes the girl was there, fingers of one hand plucking at her flannel blouse, looking at the picture. Her breath grew a trifle rapid, and then, reaching out quickly to touch the frame in a mute and futile appeal, she said,
“Mother—why?” Just that—and turned away almost guiltily when she heard her father returning.
Throughout the meal which Anna spread on the table in the far end of the room. Eve was conscious of a strange quality in her father. His gaze held on her for long intervals, and in it was something which she did not understand. It made her uneasy, and she tried to avoid it by making talk, which was a difficult matter with Eldred.
The wind shrieked about the building, tearing at cornices, bubbling heavily in the chimney, and at one particularly savage blast, she said:
“No wonder they came in here. No small boat could live in this; could it, father?”
“Unlikely. They were both wise.”
“Both? There are three boats in!”
“Three? Gallagher, the supply-boat and——”
“A little schooner. She came in at dusk, and it looked as though there was only one man aboard.”
“Hooker, eh? What was her name?”
The girl felt herself flushing.
“It was dark and I couldn't see.” She could feel him prying, she thought, and her sense of guilt was high. She was glad that he asked no more and that the meal soon ended.
Eldred went from the table to his desk, but Eve lingered at her place until he said,
“They will be waiting for you at the store.”
She rose reluctantly and drew on her jacket.
“Father, if I had to call a night like this, you couldn't hear me.”
He went on writing for a moment; then, blotted a page.
“The best way to avoid the necessity of calling is to know it never will be necessary.” He looked at her and continued, quite gently, “I'd hear you, daughter, across miles of water—any place—any time.”
When the girl was out of hearing, Eldred called,
“Anna!” His heavy voice carried through the house and the squaw came hurrying. “Tell Dimmock to come here.”
The woman drew a black shawl about her shoulders and went out. Dimmock followed her back and grunted as he entered, china-blue eyes roving the room restlessly. Eldred spoke.
“Dimmock, a hooker made the harbor.”
“So? I didn't know.”
“Unfortunately, you have only two eyes”—sarcastically. “Use them. Look her over now; if she's all right, send the master here.”
A HALF-HOUR later, another step was on the veranda and knuckles rapped at the door. Eldred, over his desk, did not move, but said heavily,
“Come!”
He did not look up as the other entered, but when he had walked to the middle of the room and was apparently hesitating, Eldred turned, and his black eyes ran the length of the trader's figure, coming to a stop at the face. It was red and puffed from the abuse of weather, but the gaze that met his was steady and—hostile. That last quality was the one which nipped Eldred's attention first; he studied those eyes and drew a cautious breath of covered surprise. For an instant there was about him bafflement and dismay; but those passed, and his looked settled to composure and met the hostility of the other with a growing mockery.
“Sit down.”
“I'll stand.”
For the second time in a few hours, that small hospitality had been refused.
“Your own choice. You've a trading hooker?”
“The Annabelle.”
In their voices was enmity, a sparring, as though neither gave words to his uppermost thoughts. Eldred's tongue-tip roved his lips and he was very alert, now. The other waited, watching closely.
“My man Dimmock said something to you about my needing a hooker?”
“That's why I'm here.”
No truth in that! Nor was it intended for truth; it rang with ironic evasion, but Eldred appeared not to detect this. He said:
“I have three or four weeks' work for a hooker—box lumber from Pine Lake, some supplies from Charlevoix, perhaps carrying a few fish. My boats are busy. I've been on the watch for some one; maybe your boat will do.”
“Maybe. I go with the boat.”
That was a taunt, but again Eldred gave no heed. He spoke briefly of distances and rates, outlining his plan. The other made but few comments and then with only a word or two, and his manner suggested that, while he was immensely interested in talking to Norman Eldred, he cared not one fig for the discussion of work. So with Eldred as well. But, finally,
“Well, what do you say?”—rising.
“I'll say this first, King Norman: I don't like to deal with you.”
“Ah, yes”—in relief, as though glad that something honest had been said, and he lowered his head slightly in that mock humility. “Yes; stories are told. I suppose every trader knows them.”
“Stories! So I need stories, Eldred?” the man flashed, and King Norman spread his feet as if to steady himself to a blow. “Do I need to listen to others?” He approached, thrusting his face close. “No; I don't have to tell you who I am!” Eldred stared back at him for the space of a slow breath, and then gave his head the slightest shake of negation. “That's truth, anyhow. You knew when you first looked at me. Did you think a ghost had come to haunt you?”
“You are rash. Your attitude will not help to an amiable understanding.”
“Rash?” He relaxed and laughed. “Amiable understandin'? Who asked for it, Eldred? Plain understandin' suits me, an' that's what we've got. You called me up here to make your offer. Eldred, tell me this: Do you want the Annabelle so badly now that you know her master?”
Eldred's red lips stirred, showing a gleam of white teeth.
“Knowing her master, and having him come this way, defiant and prejudiced, makes me want his hooker twice as badly.” The trader sniffed. “But you have mentioned stories; you have listened to them, and perhaps that is as well. Things have happened to men who come here as you have come—insolently, looking for trouble. For your own good, now' that you've brought up the matter, it might be wiser for you to go, at least until you can come back—with an open mind.”
The trader laughed again, quite easily this time, with some of the bitterness gone from his gray-brown eyes.
“I didn't plan to come here—I never did. The lake threw me in, an' if your threats scared me, I'd have to stay now. You don't want me because I'm who I am, an' so I've got to stay'. You think I'm a fool an' lookin' for trouble. That so? Yes; I thought so. Now, I've got this to say to you: Be careful, King Norman; be damned awful careful!”
He emphasized his last words by a leveled finger, and not until the hand had sunk slowly to his side did Eldred reply.
“Good! We quite understand one another, which makes everything simple and easy. Day after to-morrow, probably, you can start. Until then——”
For another moment they faced one another, but without speaking, and then the trader turned and walked deliberately out, without looking back. As the door closed, he began whistling a light, gay, happy little tune. After a lengthy interval, Eldred sat down and rubbed a palm slowly along the chair-arm.
“An ill wind—” he began, but did not finish, because his voice choked as if with anger.
THE logs were embers. Eldred was still in his chair before the hearth, huge legs sprawled toward the fire, hands crossed on his stomach, eyes vacant. He was alone and lonely, as kings are said sometimes to be. Outside his house were shadows—moving shadows—and in his heart was anger which, in the beginning, had been apprehension. He would not fear; he would rage—at misgiving and at shadows.
There were shadows enough in the life of Norman Eldred, but never before had it been necessary for him to summon rage to drive them down. Two had come back to him that night—the one had been easy to brush away, but the other— It was a new thing, and a strange thing, to find a man who challenged him—a new and strange thing to be challenged by a shadow!
The tumult of the storm was yet unabated. The forest rocked and the house trembled before the weather. And then, above it all, came another sound, a throaty cry, wavering, then rising shrilly, long-drawn, high in pitch, ringing through the house. It stopped Eldred's heart and sent him to his feet.
“Father!” came the word, and again: “Father! Father!”
Then the sound of bare feet on the stairs, a door opened, and Eve, clad in her simple nightgown, burst into the room, eyes wide and bewildered. Red spots were on her cheeky, and she stopped, clinging to the door, breathing quickly.
“Eve! What is——”
His hands closed on her firm arms, and she lifted her frightened gaze to his face. A shudder ran through her slender body, and she moved her arms as though to free them from his touch.
“A dream, father!”
“Dream?”—with a laugh of relief. “It can upset you so?”
Her breath caught sharply.
“But this one! It was more like remembering; I was only half asleep. It seemed—it was so—” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Tell it to me.” His voice betrayed alarm.
“I—I saw mother,” she said, words widely spaced, “and she was in trouble. And you weren't there, father. Another man, but not you. And that woman, the one who was here to-day—I saw her. They were all together and all so troubled—Father!”
She drew away from him, a palm at her breast, for at mention of her mother he had stiffened; one hand had sought his side and clutched the flesh as though burning pain were there.
“Only a dream,” he said dryly, relaxing.
“But it was so awful! Unhappiness all about, like fog.”
Her eyes were clearer now. They left off their staring at his face, and that broke his tension.
“It's all right, daughter. You tumble down here half asleep, a nightmare be fuddling you, and frighten your father.”
“I didn't mean— You are the only one I have to go to.”
He stepped close and put his arms about her with a long sigh. He could not see that her face against his breast was fired with a look that was almost revulsion, did not know that her palms against his shoulders were impelled to push and break that unwelcome embrace, did not detect the tremor that ran through her body as he stroked her sleek, warm back.
“The only one you have,” he said, lifting his chin as though in a boast. “Yes; the only one— Good-night, now. Go back to sleep.”
His lips touched her hair. She slipped from him with a murmur and went silently toward the stairway, giving, somehow, the impression that she would like to run.
After she had gone, Eldred stood staring at the door a long moment; then he braced his shoulders with a swagger and turned to face that framed photograph on the far wall. It was, at that distance and in the low light, only a blank rectangle, but his eyes held steady, and into them came a positive leer.
“But she comes to me,” he muttered. “She comes—to me!”
DOWN in the light-house supply-boat, Ned Borden lifted his head from the cushion where it lay and listened.
“Jen?” he asked softly. “Jenny?”
“Well?”
“You don't sleep.”
“What a fine observer you are!”
“Count sheep,” he advised.
“Sheep be blistered! I wish to high heaven I had my machine here!”
That ended their talk, but twice more Ned Borden lifted his head to stare in the direction of his wife, and for long lay awake himself, wondering.
Outside one of the shacks, Eldred stood talking cautiously to Dimmock. He had come to his man instead of sending for him an unusual happening. He turned to go.
“I saw the look,” mumbled Dimmock, “I thought it was him.”
Eldred halted.
“Two of us know—you and I. That is enough. If the men guess and the story starts, stop it! Bad enough to have it spread round the other islands, as it will. For Eve—it's as forbidden as—other happenings.”
“Aye. I know.”
The gale was gone with morning. There had been stirrings aboard the boats that had taken refuge in the harbor long before dawn. Gam Gallagher, who had worked late on his crippled motor, called in Ned Borden for help, and the sound of metal striking metal came early from the Kititiwake. The keeper's wife appeared on her boat, shaking out the skirt of her suit with petulant mutterings for the wrinkles.
The trader had been busy on the deck of his hooker since the stars faded, and as Jen Borden watched, he slung a line between the spars and hung a half-dozen freshly washed garments to dangle limply in the early sunlight.
“A man's heart,” she said to herself, “is only as clean as his shirt. That boy's get the cleanest heart on the Great Lakes.”
She told that to him a half-hour later—rowed over herself and stopped and talked while the master was bending new canvas to replace that which had blown away. When she paid her compliment, he grinned and bobbed his head.
“She's a lady, too,” Jen said, indicating the graceful little schooner.
“That's why,” he said, and she knew that he meant the washing, that he respected his ship and had a love for her and would keep her trim and match her faultless condition with his own. The woman's eyes warmed, and they talked at length. Ned finally hailed his wife, but before she dipped her oars, she said,
“You know what you're doing, dearie?” He nodded. “You've heard the stories about him?”
“All”—rather bitterly.
“And they tell me that none deals with him that don't come out the little end of the horn.”
“They tell me that, too.”
The concern in her eyes deepened.
“You mean you've got to trade with him? He's got you owing him something?”
“That's it. I owe him somethin', an' I've been too long gettin' here to pay my debt now!”
“Well, nobody can say you're going into this here spider's web with your eyes shut. But be careful of him, boy.” She looked shoreward and spun her dingy round. And be careful of that girl, dearie!” But this last was no warning; it was more like supplication, and the man looked sharply. But Jen Borden was pulling away with short, sharp strokes, scanning the buildings on shore, an unmistakable misgiving in her lace.
Before he pulled out of the harbor, Gam Gallagher went aboard the hooker and talked. The master of the Annabelle was amiable, he found, and the Irishman lingered for the better part of an hour. Among other things, he learned that the trader had arranged to work for Eldred, and after that statement had been made, a considerable silence followed.
“I s'pose you know about him,” Gam said finally, and the other laughed, which put a look of concern in the older man's eyes. “He ain't to be monkeyed with, for no reason. We've all learned that. There was Olaf Erickson, from Harbor Springs; he tried to stand up for his rights an' Eldred rammed him with his steam tug an' sunk Olaf's boat in forty fathom, an' when they had him up, his crew lied him out of it There was an Injun poacher, too, who speared out of Eldred's pound-nets, an' what happened to him was a-plenty. He couldn't walk for over a month, an' his body's twisted to this day. That's what he does to them that crosses him, an' it's little better if you try to deal with him in business. He'll stop at nothin' when it's to his advantage. Why, there was Jode MacKinnon, as fine a man as ever stood at a wheel, an' Eldred——”
“I know. I've heard the stories.” Until then, the trader had listened with good humor, but this interruption was brusk.
Gam scratched his gray beard.
“Well, then you know what to look for,” he said, watching the lad's face curiously, as if trying to remember where he had seen it before. “There's just one other thing”—as he put a foot over the rail—“it's that gel.”
The trader looked up quickly. Did all people insist on warning him against Eve Eldred?
“She's the apple of his eye, an' them that let theirs rest on her handsome ones too long—it's worse than tamperin' with his nets.”
“No worry, my friend, about that,” said the other, so strangely that Gallagher remembered the tone and wondered long after he had left the harbor behind.
PART of Eldred's fleet went out to lift that morning; the balance of the crew was busy on shore, and King Norman himself stood directing the erection of a tar-pot when a man emerged from the fringe of trees, an ax over his shoulder. He was big, as tall as Eldred. though not so massively built, swarthy of face and with a black mustache.
“Finished, Mosseau?”
“Oui. Twenty stakes more. An' dat iss all now, eh, Eldret?” pause. “You won' wan' Jean Mosseau longair, eh?”
In that question was a tinge of eagerness which was also reflected in his eyes; but that died when Eldred replied:
“Another set of stakes yet. Anyhow, you will stay on.”
The man put down his ax rather dejectedly.
“Why for you wan' me. Eldret? Me, I wan' for to go away. I haf work laak hell for you two, t'ree year, now, an' p'raps, Keeng Norman, it be bettair for you to let me go now.”
“Possibly it would be better for one of us if I should let you go. No matter—you are going to stay.”
Dark color swept into the Frenchman's face.
“Py damn, Eldret; you maak wan fool from me, eh? You play' wan minute too long wit' Jean Mosseau! Me, I am——”
“Wanted in Ottawa,” broke in Eldred, with a half-laugh. “And you cannot get to the mainland before I can. They'll be waiting for you, Mosseau.”
The flush drained from the other's face and he stood a moment as if he would resume argument or plea, but Eldred walked away, giving directions to another man, and Mosseau turned toward the woods. A dozen paces, and he halted to look back. He hated Eldred very much, it was evident, but fear was more pronounced than his hate.
HE took the road that led down the island to where he had been felling saplings for pound-net stakes and muttered to himself now and then as he walked, shaking his head from time to time. The character of the forest changed; he entered a finger of swamp where the road was damp and brown water stood on either side. Rounding an abrupt bend, he came face to face with Eve Eldred and her dog. The girl stopped short at sight of him and then, with a curious resolution coming to mingle with her surprise, started to pass on. The man dropped the ax from his shoulder.
“Mees Eve, wait wan minute.”
The girl stopped, for he was squarely in the middle of the way.
“What do you want, Jean Mosseau?”
“Do not back up”—when she moved as if to retreat. “Do you not know what it iss I wan', Mees Eve? Mus' I tell you wit' my voice, laak I tell you wit' my eyes, eh? Haf you not seen all wintair what it iss I mus' say to you?”
“I don't know what you mean. You better not stop me. My father——”
“Ah. Your fadair! It is heem who maak me spick. He will not let me go away from you who tormen' me!”
That astonished Eve, halting the growth of her fright.
“Torment you?”
“Tormen' as no man has efer been tormen'. I haf try to keep my voice still, but I cannot—no longair. It iss my 'eart which maak my voice spick; my 'eart, which has lost its pride an' iss 'urt an humble—because of you!”
“Because of me? What are you talking about?”
“About my 'eart, which has no pride. When Jean come here, his 'eart haf pride; when he look at your face”—a shrug—“his pride she begin to go, laak snow in April. When he stay here wan year, hees pride she iss all crowd' out. When lofe she come to a man, dere iss no longair room for pride.”
A deep flush came into the girl's face; her blue eyes flashed angrily.
“My father—” she began sharply, but the man interrupted.
“I know; I know your fadair. I ask heem many taam to let Jean go away, but he say,'No.' He bring me here when I come from Canada by St. Ignace; he hear me tell my frien' in a saloon when I drink too moch dat Canada she wan' Jean for to put heem in jail, mabbe. Jean she iss glat to come here wit' your fadair, den; dis islan' she wan fine place to hide, eh? Oui; wan fine place for to hide ontil a man's 'eart—” He laughed and stuck his ax in a stump. “Jail she iss wan bad place, an' Jean Mosseau she don' laak jail, hut Garden Islan' she iss wan bad place for me, too. When firs' I look into your mos' beautiful eyes, ma'mselle, when firs' I see your most lofely lip—ah, I t'ink per'aps dere be bettair place dan heafen an', mabbe, worse place dan jail.
“I haf know how you keep away from men, laak wan queen, ma'mselle”—nodding, with a sly smile showing in his face. “I haf watch; I haf leesten, an' I haf know. You maak men t'ink you fierce laak wan wil'cat, eh? You haf maak dem afrait you scratch an' bite an' tear, yes. But Jean she know”—tapping his breast. “Jean she know at 'eart you are laak wan sweet flower, eh? So gentle, so sof', so easy to—crush, eh?” He waited, head nodding lightly and eyes narrowed as he read in her changing face that he had guessed the truth. “I know dese t'ing, an' I haf wan' to go away because Jean's 'eart she what you call fain'. She don't hope moch; she jus' suffair.
“To-day, I ask wan taam more to go away, an' your fadair he say, 'No.' I can't go onless I gp to jail. I don't care for jail now, Mees Eve; my 'eart she spick! I can no longair keep heem still. My 'eart she don' wan' for to hurt wan small flower; my 'eart she bow. See! I ben' my knee—so; I bow my 'ead—so. I ask you, ma'mselle, what Jean Mosseau she can do to maak lofe come into your eye when he look into your lofely face, to maak wan smile come to your mos' beautiful lip—Mees Eve!”
At the beginning of this recital, the girl had been caught by cold fear, for behind the gentle pleading of the Frenchman was steely resolution, thinly cloaked. He had guessed that she had feared him while she appeared to be indifferent, and that had set her in a panic, but, on the heels of that revelation, his voice had become gentle, broken, and now, as he bent his knee before her, as he lowered his head, as he spread his hands in a graceful gesture of courtliness given to him, perhaps, by some forgotten ancestor of the old empire, she felt her courage rising above the fear. She stepped forward quickly.
“Jean Mosseau, you're a fool!”
His head flashed upward, and she saw a glint of teeth as his lip drew back; and then—of course there was nothing else to do. Her small palm caught him a stinging crack on the cheek, and she brushed past him, running up the road swiftly, breath quick and legs unwieldy as they are in dreams.
She did not slacken her pace until her heart's leaping was fit to choke her. She walked on then, a hand at her heaving breast, looking backward frequently.
“Oh, Friend, but that was a scare!” she said finally, eying the palm that had struck the blow. “And he knows I'm afraid, and it'd do no good to slap him—another time!”
Mosseau, surprised by Eve's action, did not attempt pursuit. He rose slowly from his knees and retrieved his ax with an angry wrench. Then he listened for sounds of the fleeing girl.
“All righ',” he said, with a nod. “All righ', Mees Eve. All righ', Keeng Norman! Jean she stay here, eh? All righ'—all righ'——”
He did not stop at the slashing which had been his destination. He came back to it later, but not until he had gone far through the forest and come out on the beach to the rude domicile of a breed. There was talk with the man, and argument and threat; and then they went inside and dug in a barrel of flour and brought out a jug. From the jug the Indian poured a bottle of liquid, and this Jean Mosseau carried back with him.
ELDRED'S store resembled more the van of a lumber camp than any other establishment, although the scattered Indian farmers and fishermen from further down the island made their purchases there, it was maintained primarily for the men of the fishing crew, not for their convenience but for Eldred's profit. And perhaps there was a deeper motive behind the establishment of that store, because, as has been recorded earlier in this narrative, it was here that Eve was forced to face those men.
It was a small place, with a counter along one side, heated by a large box stove and lighted by one swinging lamp suspended squarely in the center of the ceiling. Usually it was open only at evening and served as a gathering-place for the crew. It was their club and, to a constrained extent, their forum also, it was the place which afforded opportunity for their eyes to rest naturally on the one piece of loveliness which daily moved among them, a privilege which, at other times, was tacitly forbidden.
They would sit about the stove in cold weather, on the steps in fair, and yarn and expound and argue, while behind the counter the girl stood, outwardly indifferent to them, outwardly cool and collected, outwardly contemptuous and with something like her father's detached assurance. Those things the men saw and, knowing that she was backed by Eldred's strength, none seemed curious to look further. A more careful observer, however—such as Mosseau had been—could have seen indications of misgiving. Eve was always stimulated there, keyed to a point of maintaining her show of superiority, and this forcing of a manner which her heart did not share was evidenced in an uneven poise, a curtness when curtness was not necessary, a uniform coldness which she used when dealing with the most presumptuous of the men and with the weakest alike. Her conduct never harmonized with her lips and her eyes and the gentle timbre of her voice.
To-night, it was more of an ordeal than usual for her because, from the beginning, Mosseau was there, apart from the group about the stove, leaning against a barrel, cap shading the eyes which followed her every move and which, she now knew, detected the sham. He had been like that many nights before, staring at her when she stood, between customers, back against the shelves, arms folded, waiting with her show of counterfeit composure. But to-day he had pleaded love and, beneath his urging, had displayed a knowledge of her and a desire which had shaken her thoroughly; and to-night there was a new and alarming glitter in his eyes.
For many minutes no newcomer had entered, and those who were there showed no inclination to buy further. Eve drew the strings tight on the leather purse which served as a till, and moved as though to pass from behind the counter and lower the light, signal for the men to disperse. Then it was that the Frenchman hitched at his belt and swaggered across the floor. The girl stopped, hand on the counter, pulse in quickened measure.
“Mees Eve, I need wan pipe.” He stopped. His voice had been a trifle loud, and the steadiness of his gaze was confusing. None other, though, but Eve seemed to notice.
He selected a pipe and asked for tobacco.
“Is that all?” the girl asked as he threw down a bill.
He chuckled.
“All from de shelf, Mees Eve.” He placed both hands on the counter and leaned close, so close that she caught the whiff of whisky on his breath. It stopped her heart. “All Jean wan' to buy, yes; but two t'ing he wan' yet from Mees Eve.” He held up two extended fingers. “Two t'ing,”—shaking the hand close to her face—“firs', she iss wan smile from your mos' beautiful eye; de odder, she is wan kees from——”
“That'll do!”
The girl's frightened word cut short the talk round the stove. She stood very straight, but her knees shook.
“That will do!” she repeated. “Here is your change.”
The silver jingled on the counter, but Mosseau did not so much as look at it.
“No; dat won' do. To-day your pretty feet stamp on de 'eart of Jean Mosseau. Jean she go away from here might' queek now, but he do not go onless he taak wan smile, wan kees to remembair wan mos' beautiful yo'ng woman.”
“My father——”
“Your fadair, pah!” He spat to show contempt. “Jean not afrait from no man! You call out; your fadair come. But before he come, wan smile been maak my heart joomp; wan kees she has——”
His hand whipped across the counter and grasped her wrist. A cry of appeal broke from her lips as she turned her face sharply toward those who watched, but she read there only excitement, amazement. A great helplessness settled down on her.
Mosseau grinned, leaning lower, imprisoning both her wrists in one hand. His free arm swept about her waist, and she felt herself lifted and dragged rudely across the counter.
They swung half round beneath the lamp, the girl struggling fiercely in a grip that would not yield. For a moment she was like a trapped animal with strength and vigor and murder in her face, but he pinned her arms and drew her close, breathing hard. She tipped her head backward and tried to scream, but the effort brought only a gasp.
“So?” she heard him jeer. “So you t'ink you can get away from Jean Mosseau after he beg, eh?”
One of his hands went behind her head, forcing her face upward until their lips were not separated by the length of a finger.
“Don't!” she gasped, fight gone from her. “Let me——”
“Ah, now ma'mselle she beg, eh?”
He ended with a growl, deep in his throat, and it seemed to Eve that her racing heart would burst with shame and fright. Blood crowded into her ears; she felt him talking further but could distinguish no word, could not even hear the new, quick step on the floor.
“Let her go!”
But those three words, spoken evenly, struck like blows on her consciousness. The trader was standing there beside them, his gray-brown eyes glowing. Mosseau turned sharply, to eye this intruder.
“Ho! You wan' for me to let 'er go, eh? All righ', when I taak what I wan'!”
His lips dropped for their prize. In a split instant he would have made good his purpose, but as his mustache brushed the lightest strands of Eve's hair, a stinging crack met his head, driving it sideways with a snap.
EVE found herself free and backed against the counter, watching the Frenchman crouch and with a roar rush for the trader. Blows had been struck; Mosseau had been knocked down. She saw the trader's arms drive out like metal rods, heard the crunch of hard knuckles meeting the charging skull. The group about the stove fell away, giving more room.
She caught a flash of Mosseau's face, white—white, with dark blood flowing across it. She saw his catlike crouch again, saw him rush once more and wind his arms about the other's thighs and sweep him back and upward against the wall with a sickening crash. They went down together, Mosseau on top, but a knee doubled and drove into the pit of his stomach, flinging his body clear, flung it at Eve's feet, where he lay a moment, retching for breath.
The stranger waited across the room, making no move to carry the fight. His eyes glowed, and about his mouth was a twitching, as though he were ready to smile. Eve wanted to run, but could not move; she strained back against the counter in effort to be away from the cursing figure at her feet which struggled to its knees. A flash like cold fire swept beneath her eyes as the Frenchman's knife came out, naked and ready. The watchers surged into the corners with a staccato'd stamping. Some one shouted a warning—and Eve realized that it had been her voice.
The knife hand whipped back; the blade poised almost beneath her chin; the arm swept forward in a quick arc—and a chair, gathered with a backward sweep of the trader's big hand, met and turn it and flew on, crashing into Mosseau's chest.
And before Jean could recover his balance, the other was on him, aggressive, merciless, his blows sounding like a thick stick beating meat until the other man sagged and wilted, a battered hulk on the floor.
The trader stopped then abruptly. He stood up and looked down, then stooped, fastened his fingers in the Frenchman's collar and jerked him to his feet.
“You get out, now!” he said, without much anger.
He propelled the man to the doorway and, outside, with Mosseau standing on the top step, let him go. He fell, cursing, into the dirt.
There was a stirring in the group that had watched; it stopped when Eve stepped impulsively forward to meet the trader, who was reentering. Her eyes were burning, as her heart burned with this new possession—this incredible pride at having found a champion. One hand was lifted in a gesture that could have but one meaning—glad gratitude.
“I hope,” the man said, halting very close to her and looking into her face with a slight frown, “that you aren't goin' to thank me.”
“Thank you,” she said lowly, and laughed nervously. “Of course I am!”
“Don't!” he cut in dryly. “I didn't like to see the frog get away with it. You, though—I guess you had it comin'. I came in for some tobacco”—passing on to the counter.
Minutes later. Eve found herself alone. The men were gone; a coin lay where he had dropped it. She was conscious of only two things—the fire in her cheeks and the lead in her heart.
EVE ELDRED went slowly up the path. Minutes before, when in physical need, there had been a name to call—her father's. Now, with a need greater if not so spectacular, there was no name to call and but one place to go. She started as soon as the first bewilderment left her and, entering the house, stood there with shoulders drooping, a hand against the wall, staring mutely at her mother's photograph.
She looked younger than ever, and her slenderness seemed frailty. Her gaze held on the sweet face behind the glass with a dull hopelessness, as if there were no way to be rid of the trouble which weighed so heavily on her now. After a time she sighed unsteadily and said flatly,
“I deserved it, he said——”
Just that aloud; and the words went round and round the limited cycle of her thought, unchanging and unbroken, until her father entered.
“You're all right?” he asked sharply, walking quickly to her.
“I'm not hurt.”
He put one hand on her shoulder and cupped her chin with the other.
“I didn't figure on whisky; without it, he'd not have had the courage. I'm going to find him now, and—make him pay.”
The girl drew away from his lips in her hair, but he did not notice. Sounds of his departure died, and Eve moved to a window from where she could see the light she had left in the store, the lights from the shacks—where the men had reassembled to talk and to gloat over her double humiliation, likely. And another light—the bright riding-light of the hooker lying against the dock.
She did not think more of her father or his errand. The fright that Mosseau had set in her heart was gone. She did not care what happened to him. She was concerned with this question: Why could a man fight like that for her and then tread upon her grateful heart?
Over and over again that question shaped itself in her mind, bewildering and shaming her. In the beginning, that was all that it did—bewildered and shamed—and then, as her excitement wore down, she tried to answer the query for herself. Last night, when she went aboard his schooner to help him, he had seemed fine and kind; she had brought ashore with her a warming secret, the first truly delightful experience in months. She had let herself dream of him throughout this day. To-night, the thing which she had feared would come had happened. She had been in danger from a man, with her father beyond call. Before to-night there had been no other to defend her but her father; having another was a luxury of which she had had little hope, indeed. And then this trader, had come, and the shock which the Frenchman had given her was wiped out in a breath by the realization that she had a friend.
This was too valuable a thing to relinquish without a struggle. He had scorned her thanks; he had said the thing which no friend would have said, and yet he had done the friendly thing. That much was hers—that much he could not take away. He had been her champion, her first champion, and now, as she stood alone in that large room trying to think it all out calmly, she discovered that she was peculiarly miserly of that experience. She wanted to keep fresh the thrill which he had given her, wanted to keep it unblemished, wanted this so much that she found herself growing half indignant that any man—even the trader—should rob her of the gift which he had bestowed. She had wanted friendship so badly! She had waited for it so long. And now a man would fight for her, but would scorn her while he fought.
Why? If there was a reason for it, she had a right to know, had she not? There was no justice in it—no justice——
She heard herself say, “I've a right to know,” and with the spoken words her spirit gained strength. Her voice had been unsteady, and now she compressed her lips to keep them from trembling. It was enough to be rebuked like that, too much to let it go without understanding why.
She pondered over that, again and again and then said, half aloud,
“I've a right—” She moved to the door and stood a moment, and then she said it again. She turned the knob and hesitated; finally, with a gesture of resolution, she slipped out and ran down the steps and into the path to the dock.
ON THE Annabelle's rail she poised as lightly as a gull settles on a net-stake. No sound. She went softly to the scuttle. It was open, a light burning down there with the smell of pipe-smoke coming up; she parted her lips to hail him as she had hailed last night when he lay exhausted below, but now her voice failed and a panic of shyness swept over her. Resolution was shattered; she did not know what to say should he come. Confronting him was, suddenly, an ordeal, and she turned for flight.
“Who's there?”
His muffled exclamation froze her, and she crouched in the shadow of the cabin, heart lurching in unsteady measure. Silence, followed by his feet on the companion. She had wasted the golden moment; she could have been gone by now had she kept on, but he was there, above her in the moonlight, and she strove to retrieve that escape which she most wanted, but she was not quick enough. His hand caught her wrist as the Frenchman's had caught it; her flight was arrested; she was pulled back none too gently, and stood on the deck facing him, her free hand against her breast.
“So? You pay a visit an' change your mind!”
“Yes. Let me go, please. I have changed my mind.”
He laughed.
“Scared at bein' caught, eh? There's no need of it, though, unless it's your guilty conscience— Or haven't you got one—a conscience?”
His bitterness stung her, and when she looked into his darkened face, she tried again to break free.
“Please let me go!”
“Fair enough—if you'll tell me why you sneaked aboard.”
“It was nothing. I—I came to ask a question; then I—I decided not to. Please!”
He studied her face a moment and then let go her wrist.
“They say that's a woman's right,” he said sarcastically. “It's higher, I expect, than an owner's right to know who prowls round his boat after dark.”
THE irony in tone and manner started a warmth flooding through the girl; that was her pride stirring—when she had thought it dead! He believed she had something to hide, and she had nothing—except that bruise on her pride.
“No; we've both got some rights,” she said more steadily. “It's your right to know why I came aboard, I guess. I—I'm—I came here to ask you why you said that I deserved a thing like that—like would have happened if you hadn't been here to-night.”
Aside from the slight tremor in her voice, she did not betray her excitement. The moon lighted her face, and the trader looked into it with a queer expression.
“Do you know my name?”
She shook her head, wondering at this irrelevancy.
“Perhaps that will explain everything, then. My name is MacKinnon.”
Her lips formed a silent “Oh!” and she half lifted one hand in a gesture of surprise.
“MacKinnon? Oh, I should have known that! You were something to him? To Jode? You look like him round the eyes.” Her face brightened and her voice was glad excitement. The trader, however, only said, with no response to her mood,
“He was my father.”
Eve's breath caught.
“You are his boy! You were the one he—David? That is your name?” He made no reply; his eyes were burning as they search her face. “Why, I thought I—I—” She faltered at his forbidding silence, and confusion came over her. “But you said that explained everything! I don't even know what you mean.”
“Don't know?” he burst out savagely. “You don't remember what happened to my father here?”
“Oh, yes”—very lowly, and nodding. “I remember that. I walked the beach for days, thinking he might come back—all right. I cried every night for so long. He was my only friend; he used to take me on the lake with him sometimes, and he talked to me in the evenings and told me about you—and your sister.”
“What did he tell you about her?”
“Why, that she was about my age, and that she was sick. She'd fallen—hadn't she?—and hurt her back.”
“You remember that all right!”—bitterly. “That's why he came over here. Because the run wasn't good in Green Bay, an' he had to have money so he could get her to a big doctor in Chicago. Luck was good here, in the beginnin'; you were on the island, livin' in the house he'd built years before, an' he let you alone an' lived aboard his boat with his helper. Your father's luck wasn't much good, I guess, an' maybe that made him jealous. It was good enough when he started liftin' our nets; it made the beginnin' of his—kingdom. What do you remember about beacons?”
“They fixed some,” she replied. “Jode used to be out late, and sometimes we were, too. The reef was always bad, so they fixed the beacons so that a boat holding on them would have enough water.”
He said something under his breath, and his eyes, fast on hers, glowed in a sudden burst of rage.
“But he went on, after all, didn't he? He didn't have any trouble gettin' in before they were placed, did he? But the first night that she blew hard from the s'thwest an' he trusted to those beacons, he went on the rocks, didn't he? And his helper got ashore by the grace of God, but my father——”
“Oh, I know! We looked and looked, and I stood down there in the rain and called to him. I remember it so!”
Her voice was pregnant with sorrow, and the man gave an audible whiff of breath.
“It didn't kill my father only. My sister went out a little while afterward. The money he'd have made in those few weeks would have saved her likely. An' the next winter my mother died. They said it was a broken heart. An' we never even got the nets that had fished so well. Your father claimed he'd bought——”
The girl's gesture was but the lift and fall of a hand, but in it was such sincere pain and sympathy that few could have doubted the shock his story gave her.
“Say; are you actin'?” he burst out, but her blank stare dulled the bite of his question. “Don't you see now why all I can hope for you folks here is harm?”
“Harm?” The word came timidly, and she dropped one hand into the other.
“Don't you know that he went on the reef because the beacons were changed—that my father was murdered here?”
“Changed?” she cried, and her eyes held on his without a flicker.
“Changed! His helper knew that, because he was wheelin', an' my father stood right behind him, an' Fred—that was the helper—got to the mainland as fast as he could and as far away from your father as he could go, I guess. He told the story, an' I know, an' a hundred men know, that with weather like that an' true lights to go by, my father'd never gone on; he was too good a sailor. What Eldred threatened Fred with nobody knows, but he went through St. James an' Charlevoix scared stiff, an' he wasn't a coward. You see, I know all this, so don't try to make me think you don't. Don't try to lie to me!”
She drew back from his fierceness, lifting her clasped hands; they were small, ivory-white in the moonlight, and the man looked at them closely.
“Lie? Why should I lie to you, David?”
Her voice retained that genuine quality, and he moved uneasily, but his gaze went back to her hands.
“The story has it that your hands changed the lights that night.”
“We changed them!” she cried, missing his point, and he started as in relief at the pronoun she had used with such evident spontaneity. “Oh, no! He was so good to us; he was so kind to me. Do you believe we would do that?”
She raised in appeal one of the hands that he had suspected. He studied it, fine and small and well proportioned, and he rubbed his chin slowly with the backs of his fingers. He said, almost reluctantly,
“Well, maybe you didn't.”
“Oh I'm glad of that—I'm so glad of that!” Relief tumbled from her lips in words and tone, and for a time she pleaded with him to forget the story, to believe that no planned harm would have come to his father there, and her impulsiveness, her beauty, the spell of youth and moonlight took both suspicion and steadiness from David MacKinnon's heart. “Since then I've had no one, but my dog and—my mother.”
“Mother?”
“Her picture. That's all I have of her; it's all I ever knew of her.” He meditated on this as she continued: “Your father liked my mother's picture. He saw it the night before he—died. He took it in his hands and told me he hoped I'd grow up to be as sweet a woman as my mother must have been. He was so gentle.”
The lad nodded.
“A kind man,” He was as sober as he had been bitter. “Was he—was he happy that night?”
“He wasn't ever happy. He was just kind, and sometimes sort of sad, but he always tried to make people happy. It seems to me that that last night his smile was—sort of sweeter than ever. He stood for a long time holding my mother's picture in his hands, alone with me, and talking about girls growing up. I used to hold it afterward when I wanted him. It was the last thing of mine he touched. Would you like to see my mother's picture, David?”
He hesitated and looked about slowly.
“Yes,” he decided. It was, somehow, a link with his father.
He followed Eve over the rail to the dock.
“Is this all wrong?” he asked himself. “Is she, like the rest here, at his mercy? Or is it only actin'? I shouldn't be leavin' my boat alone—not here—but——”
He did not notice the dark blotch in the shadow of the net-house as they passed, and he did not look back, so he had no chance of seeing it stir and grow to the proportions of a man, peering out at the two figures going away.
MacKINNON stood again in the room where he had stood last night, but this time there was about him no hostility or defiance. He held the photograph to the lamplight and asked himself how a woman like that could mate with a man like Eldred. A sensitive face, a sweet face—so in contrast with the man who was called “king”—and looking suddenly at the girl, he felt a wave of sympathetic curiosity for her—and a thrill, for her serious eyes were so clear and her parted lips so gentle. His reason called out to him to beware, but a more powerful impulse made him put by the warning that this was Garden Island and that last night he had defied Norman Eldred!
“I've been glad an' sorry that the storm put me in here,” he said finally. “I guess now I'm glad again.”
“I am, too. Why didn't you come before?”
He spoke gravely.
“This place has meant a run of bad luck for us, an' that was all. When my mother died I wanted to come—was only a kid, but I was for it”—unsteadily. “She made me promise I wouldn't, so I stayed away—or tried to. The lake itself pitched me in here.”
He talked slowly, with considerable pauses between phrases, and seemed more interested in the girl's face than in what he said.
“A man's a fool to try to get away from the job that's cut out for him. You can't beat it. I promised I wouldn't come an' tried to stay away, an' here I am! I've thought about it a lot an' about my father; I've wondered what he was thinkin' just before the end.”
He looked down at the picture he held and then placed it on the table with a queer smile.
“That's one reason I'm glad I'm here; I've found out somethin' about him. I'll be goin', now.”
“Don't go—not just yet!”
There was anxiety in her voice, and when a shadow of suspicion crossed his face and he asked sharply, “Why?” the girl was confused—just for a moment, and then, putting her finger-tips on the table-top, she said:
“Because in the morning you'll be going away and you'll be in and out, and there's no telling when I can talk to you. I've been needing somebody, and you're the first one—and it seems as if I'd have to talk.”
“What about?”
“My father—” she began and looked away as if confused, then set her gaze on his face and went on, talking in a low voice and unsteadily: “I don't like it here any more. I don't know what to make of things or of myself—the way I feel, I mean. Did you ever want to talk to somebody so bad that you thought you'd—you'd cry if you didn't, and there wasn't anybody to talk to?”
David settled himself on the corner of the table, arms folded, one foot swinging.
“No; I've never felt that way.”
“But there always has been somebody to talk to when you wanted to talk, hasn't there?”
“Maybe that's it. Maybe I've never had to talk very' bad.” And when she did not continue he asked, “What's the matter here with your father and you?”
She shook her head.
“I don't know. I've thought that if your father was here, I could talk to him and he'd help me understand. He was the only one I could think of until you came yesterday. When I saw you, and you talked to me and I wasn't afraid of you, and when I found out you were going to sail from here, I thought, maybe—perhaps you were going to be my friend, like your father was, and that I could talk to you like I could to him.” Her constraint was gone by then. She talked rapidly, naturally, without confusion, and most earnestly. “I expect a girl could get along with being just lonesome. I know I could, because I was lonesome for a long time. I didn't know what it was at first. It seemed I'd been lonesome for years before I found out about it. That wasn't so long ago—when I found it out, I mean—and then I found out another thing—something worse. I'm—I'm afraid, David.”
“Afraid? Of what?”
SHE was troubled by that and shook her head.
“I don't know. Of everything, I guess. Of the men, mostly, and of my—” She checked herself, paused and hurried on: “Yes; the men. I always kept away from them, even when I was a little girl, because they frightened me. But that kind of fright isn't like—like being afraid now is.
“I don't know much about men except what my father has told me, but a girl doesn't have to be told, I guess. It isn't what they say or do; it's the way they look at you. I knew what that meant before my father said anything. Any girl could understand that without being told. Some times, lately, it's seemed like I couldn't stand it another day. So long as my father was here, I felt sort of safe—until to-night, when Mosseau grabbed me, and now I know I'm not safe even with my father. But even the other, even when I told myself that men wouldn't do more than look while my father was here, I—I can't tell you what it was, except that I was afraid and didn't know why.”
She paused and traced a line on the table with a small finger, hesitating.
“And then there's—my father.” Her voice was only a breath, and MacKinnon's foot stopped swinging. “He—he's so strange. He wants me to keep by myself, like he keeps by himself. Just the two of us; that's all he wants—nobody else at all. He brought Miss Whitney here—she was a school-teacher—and when I got to liking her, he sent her away. He won't let me talk to other folks; he doesn't even like me to have my dog Friend. I went out to your boat last night, because I knew you were alone and all gone and couldn't hurt me, and I—it seemed I couldn't go another day without seeing somebody and talking to somebody. He's warned me about men ever since I was little, and tells me the only way to be safe is to expect they're going to hurt me and be ready for it—and he keeps me in the store when I'm more afraid all the time. He's right. If I let the men think I was afraid, nothing could stop them. I know that. Whenever my father thinks I'm wanting to talk to other people, it makes him mad. It seems it's bwn this way for ever so long—that I've been lonesome and afraid, and that my father has been this way. Maybe I notice it now because I'm getting a little—tired.”
Her voice, anyhow, was weary on this last, and David unfolded his arms, puckering his lips as if he might whistle. He studied her briefly and then said,
“You don't care much about your father.”
She started.
“Don't say that!”—breathlessly.
“Why not?”
“Because that would be wrong.”
“What would?”
Their gazes clung an instant and then Eve turned her face away as if in shame, but she said,
“Not wanting your father—even to touch you!”
“So it's that bad, eh? Oh, you've told me now; no use tryin' to explain,”—as she started to protest somewhat guiltily. The girl lowered her head again and was silent, and for a moment the man gazed at her, very conscious of the splendid column of her neck, the fine texture of her skin, the sheen on her blue-black hair. He rose and stood close to her, touching her shoulders to turn her about. “Look up at me! I've been around a little, but this is the queerest yarn I've ever heard. Believe me, if it hadn't been, I wouldn't 'ave stayed here this long, leavin' my boat alone in this place. Now, what do you want me to do for you besides listen?”
At first he thought he saw response in her uplifted face, but that faded, and the girl drew away rather sharply, as though in alarm; but her gesture was accounted for by this, to her, incredible fact: a man she did not fear, who had fought for her once, was offering to help her now, and against her father.
She was confused and frightened and flattered, but she had him to think about, and she burst out nervously:
“I want you to go away now, David. I've talked and it's helped. My father—he'd be terribly mad if he thought you'd said that—offered to do more than listen. He wouldn't stop at anything if he thought I had told you this, and if he came in and found you here——”
“He don't scare me.”
“Don't you say that!” she cried. “Don't say that, David MacKinnon, or what you think happened to your father——”
He had moved as she drew away from him, and that change brought him in line with a window which the girl's body had screened. He started.
“What's that?”
Eve turned, too, and looked out. A crimson smear was rising into the night.
“Fire!” she whispered.
MacKINNON sprang forward. As he opened the door, he swung about and turned one scorching, accusing look on the girl behind him, a look which wiped out all that he had said, as his rebuke in the store an hour ago had wiped out the sweetness of having been defended. He left the door open behind him and ran down the steps, down the path toward the dock, desperately, for his Annabelle was a hopeless mass of flames.
The fateful consequences of the burning of the Annabelle are related in the next instalment of “The Beloved Pawn.” See December Everybody's—out November 15th.