# Possession (de la Roche, February 1923)/Part 1/Chapter 8

Vale was lounging on the steps of his porch, alone with his pipe. The night was intensely dark and opulently warm. The lake lay tranquil and dark as though sleeping, touched only by the light on some anchored schooner, and a faint glimmer of star-shine. In the stress of summer work the unused lawn, on the side of the house next Chard's, had been allowed to grow tall and rank. This evening Newbigging had mowed it and he now lay prone upon one of the mounds of moist, sweet-smelling grass. Vale could not see him, but the knowledge that he was there brought a comfortable sense of companionship. Of the four men in the house he liked this reckless, fair-haired Scot best. Windmill was aloof, reticent, often brooding, though his quick smile was pleasant; Gunn was lazy, and sometimes quarrelsome as he expounded his socialistic opinions in the kitchen; while Hugh McKay was always preoccupied with lambs or Phœbe.
Newbigging struck a match and lighted a cigarette. Vale had a fleeting glimpse of his head and shoulders before he settled himself once more. A sudden chill air rose from the lake and enveloped Grimstone like an embrace from the tomb. It seemed to penetrate to the very bone.
"Lord!" exclaimed Newbigging. "D'ye feel that, sir?"
"I've often noticed it at night. It will pass."
It passed. Quickly as it had come, and a tide of warm air rushed in to take its place. The night became sultry. ​Across the lake sheet lightning began to play about the horizon.
Derek heard the gate click and he listened for voices or footfalls on the drive. The silence was profound. Then a flash of lightning more vivid than what had gone before discovered a small, white figure but a yard or two away. He rose and went to it.
"Is it you, Fawnie?" he whispered. "Anything wrong?"
She caught his hand in her fingers and drew him away from the house.
"Come and walk with me," she breathed. "I'm lonesome."
He took her hand and led her across the lawn between the tall trunks of the locust and walnut trees that rose like pillars of some dark aisle about them. They crossed the old strawberry bed, now weed-grown, and marked for the plow, and came to the bank of the stream.
He emptied his pipe and dropped it in his pocket. His arm drew her to his side.
"What are you lonely for?"
"You. . . . I want to go out in the canoe."
"In this inky darkness?"
"I like it. It's awful to feel the way I do. Like as if my blood was dancin' in my body. If I could get out in that canoe I'd feel nice and quiet."
"All right," said Derek. He felt suddenly restless himself, and the thought of being in a canoe with Fawnie on the vast darkness of the lake was soothing. "But keep very quiet. Don't speak above a whisper. And keep hold of me. We'll scramble down the bank right here."
She clutched his sleeve, and the two descended the steep bank overgrown with brambles and wild roses. The stream that had gushed so freshly on the night of his arrival at Grimstone, now trickled thinly over the ledges of its chalky ​bed. Under the bridge it had formed a dark pool and there the canoe was tied. While Derek unlocked the chain that secured it the slender girl crept in and knelt in the bow. He handed her a paddle and dropped down behind her.
Under the low bridge it was profoundly dark. The moist, velvety air seemed to envelop them; to press down upon them; even to support them, as upon a sombrous cloud. The silence was scarcely disturbed by the delicate ripple of the stream as it crept languidly across the beach and entered the lake.
Vale, taking up his paddle, said:
"Are you lonesome now, Fawnie? Is this dark enough for you?"
Her voice answered out of the blackness—"I am not lonesome—but Urn listening."
"Listening. What do you think you hear?"
"Footsteps."
"Footsteps!" he murmured. "Where? On the bridge?"
"No . . . down the road . . . a lot o' them. Listen hard. Don't you hear?"
"Not a sound. They must be your people."
"No . . . men marching."
As he strained to listen a sudden burst of music broke forth but a few hundred yards away—the cheerful, brazen music of a band. The arch of silence above them was thrown into fragments like a shattered bowl. With every heartbeat the music grew louder, more penetrating.
"I know," she said. "It's the band from Mistwell. They march up to Jerrold's once every summer—in July—that's where they're marchin' now. Mr. Jerrold he gives them lemonade and sandwiches and cake and—twenty-five dollars—every blessed year. The horns frighten me."
The bandsmen were now ascending the slope to the ​bridge. The wild music of the horns was deafening; the beating of the great drum was just above their heads; the bridge vibrated beneath the tramp of feet. There must have been many hangers-on from Mistwell following. A blaze of light from torches fell upon the stream, and glittered on the sticky leaves of the Balm of Gilead trees that overhung it. The darkness was driven back, receding up the stream and under the bridge where Derek and Fawnie were hiding. They seemed to be under a whirlpool of strident music and leaping light. She stretched her hand back to his and clasped his fingers. The band descended the opposite slope; the blaze of the torches was withdrawn as abruptly as it had appeared, and now fell in waning blotches on the field of ripened grain beyond the bridge. Gradually the sound of the horns became less strident, then was softened by distance into a plaintive reiteration of a few notes. Fawnie uttered a deep sigh. Once more darkness enfolded them.
Derek dipped his paddle. . . .
"Which way?" he asked, as the canoe slipped into the lake.
The only light visible was a calm, pale beam from the Mistwell lighthouse.
"Away from that light," she whispered.
Derek turned the canoe in the direction of the unseen cliffs that rose before Durras. Fitful lightning, now and then, played upon their sides and showed him where he was. No sound broke the stillness now but the delicate drip of water from their paddles.
It seemed to the young man that a long time passed, and still she did not speak. A glimmer of lightning showed him her upright, slender body with bared arms using her paddle with short, quick Indian strokes. What were her thoughts, he wondered. Where was she leading him? He ​felt an immense curiosity aroused by this half-civilized girl—creature of masterful emotions, in her element where there was darkness and storm.
"Where are we going?" he asked, at last, and ceased to paddle.
A pinkish light hung tremulously between sky and lake. It made rosy for a second the face of the low cliff above them. It made rosy the ripply sand of the little sheltered cove hardly more than a paddle's length away.
"I know this place," she said. "Let us rest here for a little."
She turned the bow of the canoe toward the shore. It grounded with a soft jar. Derek, without a word, leaped to the sand and drew the little craft to security after him. The two stood in silence for a moment enveloped in the languorous darkness. . . . "Fawnie!" he cried low.
He felt her soft mouth under his; he was overcome by a sort of giddiness, and, at the same time filled by an immense compassion for her. . . .
They parted on the driveway, she going towards the orchard and he crossing the wet lawn. As her hand was withdrawn from his, it crossed his mind that during all this time he had never once seen her face.
He was about to enter the house when he remembered Newbigging, whom he had left lying on the mound of freshly-cut grass. He went to it and discovered the Scot heavily sleeping.
"Newbigging!" he said, shaking him, "Do you want to get your death of cold?"
Newbigging sat up, nibbing his eyes like a drowsy child. Derek felt his shirt.
"Good Lord, man! You're wet through. Get up!"
​"That'll no hurt me," said Newbigging, stretching. "I like sleepin' in the open."
"Just the same, I think you should have a drop of something to warm you."
"Weel—it micht be safer."
They went around to the side and quietly entered the dining room. From the cupboard beneath the stairs Derek got a bottle of Canadian Rye and poured Newbigging a glass.
"Your health and very good fortune, sir." He stood with one hand on the back of a chair while he drank, then carefully set the empty glass on the table.
"Mr. Vale," he said, with his bright, blue eyes on Derek's face, "if it wasn't for a few things—why—life wouldn't be worth livin'."