Ramshackle House. Footner Hulbert
received into the woods.
“I must get back to the house before they do,” Pen panted.
The glade with its tiny temple presented a scene of unearthly beauty. A shaft of moonlight was silvering the pale dome. The deep bowl below the bank was full to the brim of moonlight.
A gasp of astonishment escaped Counsell. “What’s this?”
“Afraid of ghosts?” asked Pen.
“Try me!” he laughed.
They cast their burdens on the ground. There was no time for lengthy explanations or leave-takings.
“Listen!” said Pen. “Pitch your tent among the bushes at the back of the tomb.”
“I’ll rig it from the branches,” he said. “Won’t drive stakes.”
“Good! Keep back from the edge of the bank during the day. A small boat might come into the pond, looking for you. But no native will come near this spot. It’s not safe to build a fire. What have you to eat?”
“Plenty of bread, cooked meat, eggs.”
“When I come again I’ll bring more. And a little oil stove. The water in the pond is not fit to drink, but you’ll find a spring at the foot of the bank. Watch well before you show yourself in the open.”
“When will you come again?” he asked urgently.
“When it is safe… To-morrow night I think.”
“The time will pass slowly until then,” he said simply. He picked up her hand and pressed it hard to his cheek.
Pen snatched away her hand and fled—fled from she knew not what. Trying to fly from the shattering commotion in her breast perhaps, which of course she carried with her.
As she ducked through her own particular gap in the fence she could quite clearly hear the two men, coming up the road from the beach talking together in tones of chagrin. She sped to the house and upstairs to her room. Aunt Maria was asleep in a chair. Pen awakened her with a violent shake, and commenced to undress.
“Quick! my night-dress!” she cried. “Throw these wet things into a closet. Remember to say you put me to bed as soon as Dad went out and we both fell asleep!”
“Bless God, honey! Bless God!” repeated Aunt Maria. Nevertheless she bestirred herself.
When the two men knocked on the door a sleepy voice bade them enter. All was peace within the room. Aunt Maria struggled to her feet assiduously knuckling her eyes; Pen lay in bed with the bedclothes to her chin, her eyes languourous as if but just opened.
“You see,” said Doctor Hance. “It is just as I told you. Everything is all right.”
Pendleton’s feelings were mixed. He was relieved, and as soon as he was relieved he remembered his suspicions. In order to divert attention from Aunt Maria whose delineation of sleepiness was rather melodramatic, Pen smiled at her father and murmured that she felt better.
He looked at her queerly. He could no longer contain his chagrin. “He’s gone!” he said.
Pen, aware that the doctor was keenly observing her, made her eyes wide. “Gone?” she echoed. “Where?”
“Pushed off in his canoe somewhere.”
“We’ll get him in the morning,” the doctor added, watching her still. “He can’t get far.”
Pen made her face an indifferent blank.
Pendleton was sent out of the room while the doctor made his examination. Hance was a frowsy old man with a rough tongue and a compassionate irascible eye. Everybody quarreled with him and depended on him as on a tower. He had no illusions left about mankind, but he gave all his strength to tending them. Pen dreaded being left alone with him. However he said no more about the escaped canoeist. From the character of his grunts as he sounded her she knew she had not deceived him at all. When the door closed behind him she flew to it to hear what he would say to her father.
Pendleton was just outside the door. “Well?” he asked anxiously.
“She’s all right,” was the gruff reply. “A bit of a shock maybe. No organic trouble.”
“Hum,” said Pendleton, and his thoughts immediately flew off to the other matter. “That engine of mine makes such a confounded racket! He must have heard me start off and guessed that I was on to him and had gone for help.”
“I suppose so,” said Dr. Hance with a grim chuckle.
They passed downstairs.
Pen thought with a thankful heart: “He’s not going to give me away! Blessed old man!”
CHAPTER III
AN IRRUPTION FROM THE WORLD
At all times Pen was an early riser but next morning she was up with the sun. While she was dressing, her collie Dougall set up a great barking in the back yard. At night he was kept fastened in his kennel there to keep watch that no fox or ’possum came after the poultry. Pen knew that it could not be one of those marauders now because it was broad day and there was no alarm amongst the chickens. So she paid no attention. Doug, like the best of dogs, sometimes raised a false alarm.
Night was too far away to wait for. Secure in the feeling of their solitude Pen planned to carry Don Counsell what he needed and get back to the house before anyone stirred. Her father arose like clockwork at six and Aunt Maria turned up in the kitchen yawning about that hour, or later. It was a queer thing to visit a man at five o’clock in the morning—but for humanity’s sake! He would be asleep in his tent and would never know she had been there until he awoke and found what she had left. Pen’s heart gave a queer little jump at the thought of being able to look at him sleeping without any necessity of veiling her eyes.
She billowed softly down the great stairway—it was a treat to stand at the bottom and see Pen come down with her toes pointing—and scampered into the pantry. From a high shelf she got down an old primus stove which had not been used in a long time, and cleaned it and filled it with oil. Then she made up a basket of bread, butter, cream, eggs, strawberries, etc., and started out of the house.
Some instinct of caution impelled her to put her things down on a chest in the hall, while she gave a preliminary peep out of doors. She was greatly taken aback to discover another young gentleman of the world sitting on the porch playing with one of her innumerable kittens. He sprang up, and snatching off his cap, bade her good morning.
Pen could only stare and stammer. “Why…who…how.” Finally she managed to blurt out: “Where did you come from?”
His air was ingratiating—a shade too ingratiating perhaps. “Rowed over from the Island,” he explained. “I arrived there about three and had a snooze on the seat of my car. As soon as it began to get light I hunted about until I found a skiff with oars in it, and came on over. I suppose there’ll be a row when the owner finds it gone, but I’ll square myself with him later. I knew your house by the cupola.”
Pen lacked a key to all this. She looked her further questions.
“I’m on the —— newspaper,” he went on cheerfully. “Claude Banner is my name. Last night somebody telephoned from the Island that Don Counsell had been here all day yesterday, so I got a car at once and started. Lost my way a couple of times. I aimed to come here direct by road, but the hills in the woods were washed so badly I had to turn around and go to the Island.”
“Mr. Counsell has gone,” said Pen. “You have had your journey for nothing.”
“Not at all!” he said with his assured and agreeable smile. “It’s your story that I came after.”
Pen looked at him with a kind of horror. This possibility had not occurred to her. She withdrew into herself. “I have no story to tell,” she said coldly.
He was not