A Daughter of the Forest. Raymond Evelyn
with long kneeling. The fire had gone out. Meroude was asleep on the blankets spread for Margot, who had not returned, nor the master. As for that matter the house-mistress had not expected that they ever would.
“There is nothin’ left. I am alone. It was the glass. Ah! that the palsy had but seized my unlucky hand before I took it from its shelf! How still it is. How clear, too, is my darling’s laugh – it rings through the room – it is a ghost. It will haunt me al-ways, al-ways.”
Unable longer to bear the indoor silence, which her fancy filled with familiar sounds, she unbarred the heavy door and stepped out.
“Ah! is it possible! Can the sun be settin’ that way? as if there had been nothin’ happenin’.”
Wrecks strewed the open ground about the cabin, poultry coops were washed away, the cow shed was a heap of ruins, into which the trembling observer dared not peer. That Snowfoot should be dead was a calamity but second only to the loss of master and nursling.
“Ah! my beast, my beast. The best in all this northern Maine. That the master bought and brought in the big canoe for an Easter gift to his so faithful Angelique. And yet the sun sets as red and calm as if all was the same as ever.”
It was, indeed, a scene of grandeur. The storm, in passing northward, had left scattered banks of clouds, now colored most brilliantly by the setting sun and widely reflected on the once more placid lake. But neither the beauty, nor the sweet, rain-washed air, appealed to the distracted islander who faced the west and shook her hand in impotent rage toward it.
“Shine, will you? With the harm all done and nothin’ left but me, old Angelique! Pouf! I turn my back on you!”
Then she ran shoreward with all speed, dreading what she might find yet eager to know the worst, if there it might be learned. With her apron over her head she saw only what lay straight before her and so passed the point of rocks without observing her master lying behind it. But a few steps further she paused, arrested by a sight which turned her numb with superstitious terror. What was that coming over the water? A ghost! a spirit!
Did spirits paddle canoes and sing as this one was singing?
“The boatman’s song is borne along far over the water so blue,
And loud and clear, the voice we hear of the boatman so honest and true;
He’s rowing, rowing, rowing along,
He’s rowing, rowing, rowing along —
He’s rowing and singing his song.”
Ghosts should sing hymns, not jolly little ballads like this, in which one could catch the very rhythm and dip of oar or paddle. Still, it was as well to wait and see if this were flesh or apparition before pronouncing judgment.
It was certainly a canoe, snowy white and most familiar – so familiar that the watcher began to lose her first terror. A girl knelt in it, Indian fashion, gracefully and evenly dipping her paddle to the melody of her lips. Her bare head was thrown back and her fair hair floated loose. Her face was lighted by the western glow, on which she fixed her eyes with such intentness that she did not perceive the woman who awaited her with now such mixed emotions.
But Tom saw. Tom, the eagle, perched in the bow, keen of vision and of prejudice. Between him and old Angelique was a grudge of long standing. Whenever they met, even after a brief separation, he expressed his feelings by his hoarsest screech. He did so now and, by so doing, recalled Margot from sky-gazing and his enemy from doubt.
“Ah! Angelique! Watching for me? How kind of you. Hush, Tom. Let her alone, good Angelique, poor Angelique!”
The eagle flapped his wings with a melancholy disdain and plunged his beak in his breast. The old woman on the beach was not worth minding, after all, by a monarch of the sky – as he would be but for his broken wing – but the girl was worth everything, even his obedience.
She laughed at his sulkiness, plying her paddle the faster, and soon reached the pebbly beach, where she sprang out, and drawing her canoe out of the water, swept her old nurse a curtsey.
“Home again, mother, and hungry for my supper.”
“Supper, indeed! Breakin’ my heart with your run-about ways! and the hoorican’, with ever’thin’ ruined, ever’thin’! The master – Where’s he, I know not. The great pine broken like a match; the coops, the cow-house, and Snowfoot – Ah, me! Yet the little one talks of supper!”
Margot looked about her in astonishment, scarcely noticing the other’s words. The devastation of her beloved home was evident, even down on the open beach, and she dared not think what it might be further inland.
“Why, it must have been a cyclone! We were reading about them only yesterday and Uncle Hugh – did you say that you knew – where is he?”
Angelique shook her head.
“Can I tell anythin’, me? Into the storm he went and out of it he will come alive, as you have. If the good Lord wills,” she added reverently.
The girl sprang to the woman’s side, and caught her arm impatiently.
“Tell me, quick. Where is he? where did you last see him?”
“Goin’ into the hoorican’, with wood upon his shoulder. To make a beacon for you. So I guess. But you – tell how you come alive out of all that?” Sweeping her arm over the outlook.
Margot did not stop to answer but darted toward the point of rocks where, if anywhere, she knew her guardian would have tried his signal fire. In a moment she found him.
“Angelique! Angelique! He’s here. Quick – quick – He’s – Oh! is he dead, is he dead?”
There was both French and Indian blood in mother Ricord’s veins, a passionate loyalty in her heart, and the suppleness of youth still in her spare frame. With a dash she was at the girl’s side and had thrust her away, to kneel herself and lift her master’s head from its hard pillow of rock.
With swift nervous motions she unfastened his coat and bent her ear to his breast.
“’Tis only a faint, maybe shock. In all the world was only Margot, and Margot was lost. Ugh! the hail. See, it is still here – look! water, and – yes, the tea! It was for you – Ah!”
Her words ended with a sigh of satisfaction as a slight motion stirred the features into which she peered so earnestly, and she raised her master’s head a bit higher. Then his eyes slowly opened and the dazed look gradually gave place to a normal expression.
“Why, Margot! Angelique? What’s happened?”
“Oh! Uncle Hugh! are you hurt? are you ill? I found you here behind the rocks and Angelique says – but I wasn’t hurt at all. I wasn’t out in any storm, didn’t know there had been one, that is, worth minding, till I came home – ”
“Like a ghost out of the lake. She was not even dead, not she. And she was singin’ fit to burst her throat while you were – well, maybe, not dead, yourself.”
At this juncture, Tom, the inquisitive, thrust his white head forward into the midst of the group and, in her relief from her first fear, Margot laughed aloud.
“Don’t, Tom! You’re one of the family, of course, and since none of the rest of us will die to please that broken mirror, you may have to! Especially, if there’s a new brood out – ”
But here Angelique threw up her free hand with such a gesture of despair that Margot said no more, and her face sobered again, remembering that, even though they were all still alive, there might be suffering untold among her humbler woodland friends. Then, as Mr. Dutton rose, almost unaided, a fresh regret came:
“That there should be a cyclone, right here at home, and I not to see it! See! Look, uncle, look! You can trace its very path, just as we read. Away to the south there is no sign of it, nor on the northeast. It must have swept up to us out of the southeast and taken our island in its track. Oh! I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
The man rested his hand upon her shoulder and turned her gently