Caius was realizing that as she talked she was thinking only of the theme, not at all of him; he had enough refinement in him to perceive this quite clearly. It was the first time that she had spoken of her religion to him, and her little sermon, which he felt to be too wholly unreasonable to appeal to his mind, was yet too wholly womanly to repel his heart.

Some dreamy consciousness seemed to come to her now that she had tarried longer than she wished, and perhaps that her subject had not been one that she cared to discuss with him. She turned and put her hand on the pommel, and sprang into the saddle. He had often seen her make that light, wonderful spring that seated her as if by magic on her horse's back, but in her last weeks of nursing the sick folk she had not been strong enough to do it. He saw now how much stronger she looked. The weeks of rest had made her a different woman; there was a fresh colour in her cheek, and the tired lines were all gone. She looked younger by years than when he saw her last—younger, too, than when he had first seen her, for even then she was weary. If he could only have seen the line of her chin, or the height of her brow, or the way her hair turned back from her temples, he thought that he might not have reckoned the time when he had first seen her in the sick-room at Cloud Island as their first meeting.

"You are going on?" said Madame Le Maitre.

"Unless I can be of service to you by turning with you."

He knew by the time of day that he must turn shortly; but he had no hope that she wanted him to go with her.

"You can do me more service," she said, and she gave him a little smile that was like the ghost of the sea-maid's smile, "by letting me go home alone."

He rode on, and when he looked back he saw that her horse was galloping and casting up a little cloud of light snow behind it, so that, riding as it were upon a small white cloud, she disappeared round the turn of the cliffs.

Caius found no more pictures that day that he felt to be worthy of much attention. He went back to the festive scene of the marriage, and moving his horse nearer and further from it, he found that only from the point where the lady had taken her stand was it to be distinctly seen. Twenty yards from the right line of vision, he might have passed it, and never known the beauty that the streaks and stains could assume.

When he went home he amused himself by seeking on the road for the track of the other horse, and when he found that it turned to Cloud Island he was happier. The place, at least, would not be so lonely when the lady was at home.



BOOK III.



CHAPTER I.

HOW HE HUNTED THE SEALS.

At this time on the top of the hills the fishermen were to be seen loitering most of the day, looking to see if the seals were coming, for at this season the seals, unwary creatures, come near the islands upon the ice, and in the white world their dark forms can be descried a long distance off. There was promise of an easy beginning to seal-fishing this year, for the ice had not yet broken from the shore on the seaward side of the island, and there would not at first be need of boats.

Caius, who had only seen the fishermen hanging about their doors in lazy idleness, was quite unprepared for the excitement and vigour that they displayed when this first prey of the year was seen to approach.

It was the morning after Madame Le Maitre had returned to her home that Caius, standing near his own door, was wondering within himself if he might treat her like an ordinary lady and give her a formal call of welcome. He had not decided the point when he heard sounds as of a mob rushing, and, looking up the road that came curving down the hill through the pine thicket, he saw the rout appear—men, women and children, capped and coated in rough furs, their cheeks scarlet with the frost and exercise, their eyes sparkling with delight. Singly down the hill, and in groups, they came, hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm, some driving in wooden sleighs, some of them beating such implements of tinware as might be used for drums, some of them shouting words in that queer Acadian French he could not understand, and all of them laughing.

He could not conceive what had happened; the place that was usually so lonely, the people that had been so lazy and dull—everything within sight seemed transformed into some mad scene of carnival. The crowd swept past him, greeting him only with shouts and smiles and grimaces. He knew from the number that all the people from that end of the island were upon the road to the other end, and running after with hasty curiosity, he went far enough to see that the news of their advent had preceded them, and that from every side road or wayside house the people came out to join in the riotous march.

Getting further forward upon the road, Caius now saw what he could not see from his own door, a great beacon fire lit upon the hill where the men had been watching. Its flame and smoke leaped up from the white hill into the blue heaven. It was the seal-hunting, then, to which all the island was going forth. Caius, now that he understood the tumult, experienced almost the same excitement. He ran back, donned clothes suitable for the hunt across the ice, and, mounting his horse, rode after the people. They were all bound for the end of the island on which the lighthouse stood, for a number of fish-sheds, used for cooking and sleeping in the fishing season, were built on the western shore not far from the light; and from the direction in which the seals had appeared, these were the sheds most convenient for the present purpose.

By the time Caius reached the sheds, the greater number of the fishermen were already far out upon the ice. In boots and caps of the coarse gray seal-skin, with guns or clubs and knives in their hands, they had a wild and murderous aspect as they marched forward in little bands. The gait, the very figure, of each man seemed changed; the slouch of idleness had given place to the keen manner of the hunter. On shore the sheds, which all winter had been empty and lonely, surrounded only by curling drifts, had become the scene of most vigorous work. The women, with snow-shovels and brooms, were clearing away the snow around them, opening the doors, lighting fires in the small stoves inside, opening bags and hampers which contained provision of food and implements for skinning the seals. The task that these women were performing was one for the strength of men; but as they worked now their merriment was loud. All their children stood about them, shouting at play or at such work as was allotted to them. Some four or five of the women, with Amazonian strength, were hauling from one shed a huge kettle, in which it was evidently meant to try the fat from certain portions of the seal.

Caius held his horse still upon the edge of the ice, too well diverted with the activity on the shore to leave it at once. Behind the animated scene and the row of gray snow-thatched sheds, the shore rose white and lonely. Except for the foot-tracks on the road by which they had come, and the peak of the lighthouse within sight, it would have seemed that a colony had suddenly sprung to life in an uninhabited Arctic region.

It was from this slope above the sheds that Caius now heard himself hailed by loud shouting, and, looking up, he saw that O'Shea had come there to overlook the scene below. Some women stood around him. Caius supposed that Madame Le Maitre was there.

O'Shea made a trumpet of his hands and shouted that Caius must not take his horse upon the ice that day, for the beast would be frightened and do himself harm.

Caius was affronted. The horse was not his, truly, but he believed he knew how to take care of it, yet, as it belonged to a woman, he could not risk disobeying this uncivil prohibition. Although he was accustomed to the rude authority which O'Shea assumed whenever he wished to be disagreeable, Caius had only learned to take it with an outward appearance of indifference—his mind within him always chafed; this time the affront to his vanity was worse because he believed that Madame Le Maitre had prompted, or certainly permitted, the insult. It did not soothe him to think that, with a woman's nervousness, she might have more regard for his safety than that of the horse. The brightness died out of the beautiful day, and in a lofty mood of ill-used indifference he assured himself that a gentleman could take little interest in such barbarous sport as seal-hunting. At any rate, it would go on for many a day. He certainly had not the slightest intention of dismounting at O'Shea's command in order to go to the hunt.

Caius held his horse as quiet as he could for some ten minutes, feigning an immense interest in the occupation of the women; then leisurely curvetted about, and set his horse at a light trot along the ice close by the shore.

He rode hastily past the only place where he could have ascended the bank, and after that he had no means of going home until he had rounded the island and returned by the lagoon. The distance up to the end was seven miles. Caius rode on under the lonely cliffs where the gulls wintered, and threading his way upon smooth places on the ice, came, in the course of not much more than an hour, up to the end of the cliffs, crossed the neck of the sand-bar, and followed the inward shore till he got back to the first road.

Now, on this end of the island very few families lived. Caius had only been upon the road he was about to traverse once or twice. The reason it was so little built upon was that the land here belonged entirely to the farm of Madame Le Maitre, which stretched in a narrow strip for a couple of miles from O'Shea's dwelling to the end of the island. The only point of interest which this district had for Caius was a cottage which had been built in a very sheltered nook for the accommodation of two women, whose business it was to care for the poultry which was kept here. Caius had been told that he might always stop at this lodge for a drink of milk or beer or such a lunch as it could afford, and being thirsty by reason of hard riding and ill-temper, he now tried to find the path that led to it.



CHAPTER II.

ONCE MORE THE VISION.

When Caius turned up the farm road, which was entirely sheltered between gentle slopes, the bright March sun felt almost hot upon his cheek. The snow road under his horse's hoofs was full of moisture, and the snowy slopes glistened with a coating of wet. He felt for the first time that the spring of the year had come.

He was not quite certain where lay the cottage of which he was in quest; and, by turning up a wrong path, he came to the back of its hen-houses. At first he only saw the blank wall of a cowshed and two wooden structures like old-fashioned dovecotes, connected by a high fence in which there was no gate. Up to this fence he rode to look over it, hoping to speak to the people he heard within; but it was too high for him to see over. Passing on, he brought his head level with a small window that was let into the wall of one of the hen-houses. The window had glass in it which was not at all clean, but a fragment of it was broken, and through this Caius looked, intending to see if there was any gate into the yard which he could reach from the path he was on.

Through the small room of deserted hen-roosts, through the door which was wide open on the other side, he saw the sunny space of the yard beyond. All the fowls were gathered in an open place that had been shovelled between heaps of hard-packed snow. There were the bright tufts of cocks' tails and the glossy backs of hens brown and yellow; there were white ducks, and ducks that were green and black, and great gray geese of slender make that were evidently descended from the wild goose of the region. On the snow-heaps pigeons were standing—flitting and constantly alighting—with all the soft dove-colours in their dress. In front of the large feathered party was a young woman who stood, basin in hand, scattering corn, now on one side, now on another, with fitful caprice. She made game of the work of feeding them, coquettishly pretending to throw the boon where she did not throw it, laughing the while and talking to the birds, as if she and they led the same life and talked the same language. Caius could not hear what she said, but he felt assured that the birds could understand.

For some few minutes Caius looked at this scene; he did not know how long he looked; his heart within him was face to face with a pain that was quite new in his life, and was so great that he could not at first understand it, but only felt that in comparison all smaller issues of life faded and became as nothing.

Beyond the youthful figure of the corn-giver Caius saw another woman. It was the wife of O'Shea, and in a moment her steadfast, quiet face looked up into his, and he knew that she saw him and did not tell of his presence; but, as her eyes looked long and mutely into his, it seemed to him that this silent woman understood something of the pain he felt. Then, very quietly, he turned his horse and rode back by the path that he had come.

The woman he had seen was the wife of the sea-captain Le Maitre. He said it to himself as if to be assured that the self within him had not in some way died, but could still speak and understand. He knew that he had seen the wife of this man, because the old cloak and hood, which he knew so well, had only been cast off, and were still hanging to the skirts below the girlish waist, and the white cap, too, had been thrown aside upon the snow—he had seen it. As for the girl herself, he had loved her so long that it seemed strange to him that he had never known until now how much he loved her. Her face had been his one thought, his one standard of womanly beauty, for so many years that he was amazed to find that he had never known before how beautiful she was. A moment since and he had seen the March sunshine upon all the light, soft rings of curling hair that covered her head, and he had seen her laughter, and the oval turn of the dimpled chin, and within the face he had seen what he knew now he had always seen, but never before so clearly—the soul that was strong to suffer as well as strong to enjoy.

By the narrow farm-path which his horse was treading Caius came to the road he had left, and, turning homeward, could not help coming in front of the little cottage whose back wall he had so lately visited. He had no thought but of passing as quickly as might be, but he saw O'Shea's wife standing before the door, looking for him with her quiet, eager eyes. She came out a few steps, and Caius, hardly stopping, stooped his head to hear what she had to say.

"I won't tell her," said the woman; then she pleaded: "Let her be, poor thing! Let her be happy while she can."

She had slipped back into the house; Caius had gone on; and then he knew that he had this new word to puzzle over. For why should he be supposed to molest the happy hours of the woman he loved, and what could be the sorrow that dogged her life, if her happy hours were supposed to be rare and precious? O'Shea's wife he had observed before this to be a faithful and trusted friend of her mistress; no doubt she spoke then with the authority of knowledge and love.

Caius went home, and put away his horse, and entered his small house. Everything was changed to him; a knowledge that he had vaguely dreaded had come, but with a grief that he had never dreamed of. For he had fancied that if it should turn out that his lady-love and Madame Le Maitre were one, his would only be the disappointment of having loved a shadow, a character of his own creating, and that the woman herself he would not love; but now that was not what had befallen him.

All the place was deserted; not a house had shown a sign of life as he passed. All the world had gone after the seals. This, no doubt, was the reason why the two women who had not cared for the hunting had taken that day for a holiday. Caius stood at his window and looked out on the sea of ice for a little while. He was alone in the whole locality, but he would not be less alone when the people returned. They had their interests, their hopes and fears; he had nothing in common with any of them; he was alone with his pain, and his pain was just this, that he was alone. Then he looked out further and further into the world from which he had come, into the world to which he must go back, and there also he saw himself to be alone. He could not endure the thought of sharing the motions of his heart and brain with anyone but the one woman from whom he was wholly separated. Time might make a difference; he was forced to remember that it is commonly said that time and absence abate all such attachments. He did not judge that time would make much difference to him, but in this he might be mistaken.

A man who has depth in him seldom broods over real trouble—not at first, at least. By this test may often be known the real from the fanciful woe. Caius, knew, or his instincts knew, that his only chance of breasting the current was, not to think of its strength, but to keep on swimming. He took his horse's bits and the harness that had been given him for his little sleigh, cleaning and burnishing everything with the utmost care, and at the same time with despatch. He had some chemical work that had been lying aside for weeks waiting to be done, and this afternoon he did it. He had it on his mind to utilize some of his leisure by writing long letters that he might post when it was possible for him to go home; to-night he wrote two of them.

While he was writing he heard the people coming in twos and threes along the road back to their houses for the night. He supposed that O'Shea had got home with the girls he had been escorting, and that his wife had come home, and that Madame Le Maitre had come back to her house and taken up again her regular routine of life.



CHAPTER III.

"LOVE, I SPEAK TO THY FACE."

Caius thought a good deal about the words that O'Shea's wife had said to him. He did not know exactly what she meant, nor could he guess at all from what point of view concerning himself she had spoken; but the general drift of her meaning appeared to be that he ought not to let Madame Le Maitre know where and how he had seen her the day before. In spite of this, he knew that he could neither be true to himself, nor to the woman he was forced to meet daily, if he made any disguise of the recognition which had occurred. He was in no hurry to meet her; he hoped little or nothing from the interview, but dreaded it. Next day he went without his horse out to where the men were killing the seals upon the edge of the ice.

The warm March sun, and the March winds that agitated the open sea, were doing their work. To-day there was water appearing in places upon the ice where it joined the shore, and when Caius was out with a large band of men upon the extreme edge of the solid ice, a large fragment broke loose. There were some hundred seals upon this bit of ice, which were being butchered one by one in barbarous fashion, and so busy were the men with their work that they merely looked at the widening passage of gray water and continued to kill the beasts that they had hedged round in a murderous ring. It was the duty of those on the shore to bring boats if they were needed. The fragment on which they were could not float far because the sea outside was full of loose ice, and, as it happened, when the dusk fell the chasm of water between them and the shore was not too broad to be jumped easily, for the ice, having first moved seaward, now moved landward with the tide.

For two or three days Caius lent a hand at killing and skinning the gentle-eyed animals. It was not that he did not feel some disgust at the work; but it meant bread to the men he was with, and he might as well help them. It was an experience, and, above all, it was distraction. When the women had seen him at work they welcomed him with demonstrative joy to the hot meals which they prepared twice a day for the hunters. Caius was not quite sure what composed the soups and stews of which he partook, but they tasted good enough.

When he had had enough of the seal-hunt it took him all the next day to cleanse the clothes he had worn from the smell of the fat, and he felt himself to be effeminate in the fastidiousness that made him do it.

During all these days the houses and roads of the island were almost completely deserted, except that Caius supposed that, after the first holiday, the maids who lived with Madame Le Maitre were kept to their usual household tasks, and that their mistress worked with them.

At last, one day when Caius was coming from a house on one of the hills which he had visited because there was in it a little mortal very new to this world, he saw Madame Le Maitre riding up the snowy road that he was descending. He felt glad, at the first sight of her, that he was no longer a youth but had fully come to man's estate, and had attained to that command of nerve and conquest over a beating heart that is the normal heritage of manhood. This thought came to him because he was so vividly reminded of the hour in which he had once before sought an interview with this lady—even holding her hand in his—and of his ignominious repulse. In spite of the sadness of his heart, a smile crossed his face, but it was gone before he met her. He had quite given up wondering now about that seafaring episode, and accepted it only as a fact. It did not matter to him why or how she had played her part; it was enough that she had done it, and all that she did was right in his eyes.

The lady's horse was walking slowly up the heavy hill; the reins she hardly held, letting them loose upon its neck. It was evident that with her there was no difference since the time she had last seen Caius; it appeared that she did not even purpose stopping her horse. Caius stopped it gently, laying his hand upon its neck.

"What is it?" she asked, with evident curiosity, for the face that he turned to her made her aware that there was something new in her quiet life.

It was not easy to find his words; he did not care much to do so quickly. "I could not go on," he said, "without letting you know——" He stopped.

She did not answer him with any quick impatient question. She looked at the snowy hill in front of her. "Well?" she said.

"The other day, you know," he said, "I rode by the back of your poultry farm, and—I saw you when you were feeding the birds."

"Yes?" she said; she was still looking gravely enough at the snow. The communication so far did not affect her much.

"Then, when I saw you, I knew that I had seen you before—in the sea—at home."

A red flush had mantled her face. There was perhaps an air of offence, for he saw that she held her head higher, and knew what the turn of the neck would be in spite of the clumsy hood; but what surprised him most was that she did not express any surprise or dismay.

"I did not suppose," she said, in her own gentle, distant way, "that if you had a good memory for that—foolish play, you would not know me again." Her manner added: "I have attempted no concealment."

"I did not know you in that dress you wear"—there was hatred for the dress in his tone as he mentioned it—"so I supposed that you did not expect me to know who you were."

She did not reply, leaving the burden of finding the next words upon him. It would seem that she did not think there was more to say; and this, her supreme indifference to his recognition or non-recognition, half maddened him. He suddenly saw his case in a new aspect—she was a cruel woman, and he had much with which to reproach her.

"'That foolish play,' as you call it——" he had begun angrily, but a certain sympathy for her, new-born out of his own trouble, stopped him, and he went on, only reproach in his tone: "It was a sad play for me, because my heart has never been my own since. I could not find out who you were then, or where you hid yourself; I do not know now, but——" He stopped; he did not wish to offend her; he looked at the glossy neck of the horse he was holding. "I was young and very foolish, but I loved you."

The sound of his own low sad tones was still in his ears when he also heard the low music of irrepressible laughter, and, looking up, he saw that the recollection which a few minutes before had made him smile had now entirely overcome the lady's gravity. She was blushing, she was trying not to laugh; but in spite of herself she did laugh more and more heartily, and although her merriment was inopportune, he could not help joining in it to some extent. It was so cheerful to see the laughter-loving self appear within the grave face, to be beside her, and to have partnership in her mirth. So they looked in each other's eyes, and they both laughed, and after that they felt better.

"And yet," said he, "it was a frolic that has worked sorrow for me."

"Come," said she, lifting her reins, "you will regret if you go on talking this way."

She would have gone on quite lightly and contentedly, and left him there as if he had said nothing of love, as if their words had been the mere reminiscence of a past that had no result in the present, as if his heart was not breaking; but a fierce sense of this injustice made him keep his hold of her bridle. She could weep over the pains of the poor and the death of their children. She should not go unmindful that his happiness was wrecked.

"Do you still take me for the young muff that I used to be, that you pay no heed to what I say? I would scorn to meet you every day while I must remain here and conceal from you the fact which, such is my weakness, is the only fact in life for me just now. My heart is breaking because I have found that the woman I love is wholly out of my reach. Can you not give that a passing thought of pity? I have told you now; when we meet, you will know that it is not as indifferent acquaintances, but as—enemies if you will, for you, a happy married woman—will count me your enemy! Yet I have not harmed you, and the truth is better at all costs."

She was giving him her full attention now, her lips a little parted as if with surprise, question plainly written upon her face. He could not understand how the cap and hood had ever concealed her from him. Her chief beauty lay, perhaps, in the brow, in the shape of the face, and in its wreath of hair—or at least in the charm that these gave to the strong character of the features; but now that he knew her, he knew her face wholly, and his mind filled in what was lacking; he could perceive no lack. He looked at her, his eyes full of admiration, puzzled the while at her evident surprise.

"But surely," she said, "you cannot be so foolish—you, a man now—to think that the fancy you took to a pretty face, for it could have been nothing more, was of any importance."

"Such fancies make or mar the lives of men."

"Of unprincipled fools, yes—of men who care for appearance more than sympathy. But you are not such a man! It is not as if we had been friends; it is not as if we had ever spoken. It is wicked to call such a foolish fancy by the name of love; it is desecration."

While she was speaking, her words revealed to Caius, with swift analysis, a distinction that he had not made before. He knew now that before he came to this island, before he had gone through the three months of toil and suffering with Josephine Le Maitre, it would truly have been foolish to think of his sentiment concerning her as more than a tender ideal. Now, that which had surprised him into a strength of love almost too great to be in keeping with his character, was the unity of two beings whom he had believed to be distinct—the playmate and the saint.

"Whether the liking we take to a beautiful face be base or noble depends, madame, upon the face; and no man could see yours without being a better man for the sight. But think: when I saw the face that had been enshrined for years in my memory yesterday, was it the face of a woman whom I did not know—with whom I had never spoken?" He was not looking at her as he spoke. He added, and his heart was revealed in the tone: "You do not know what it is to be shut out from all that is good on earth."

There came no answer; in a moment he lifted his eyes to see what response she gave, and he was astonished to detect a look upon her face that would have become an angel who had received some fresh beatitude. It was plain that now she saw and believed the truth of his love; it appeared, too, that she felt it to be a blessing. He could not understand this, but she wasted no words in explanation. When her eyes met his, the joy in her face passed into pity for a minute; she looked at him quietly and frankly; then she said:

"Love is good in itself, and suffering is good, and God is good. I think," she added very simply, as a child might have done, "that you are good, too. Do not fear or be discouraged."

Then, with her own hand, she gently disengaged his from the bridle and rode up the hill on her errand of mercy.



CHAPTER IV.

HOPE BORN OF SPRING.

"Love is good; suffering is good; God is good"—that was what she had answered him when he had said that for her sake he was shut out from all that was good on earth. His heart did not rebel so bitterly against this answer as it would have done if he had not felt assured that she spoke of what she had experienced, and that his present experience was in some sort a comradeship with her. Then, again, there was the inexplicable fact that the knowledge of the way in which he regarded her had given her pleasure; that was a great consolation to him, although he did not gather from it any hope for the future. Her whole manner indicated that she was, as he supposed her to be, entirely out of his reach, not only by the barrier of circumstance, but by her own deliberate preference; and yet he was certain that she was glad that he loved her. What did that mean? He had so seen her life that he knew she was incapable of vanity or selfish satisfaction; when she was glad it was because it was right to be glad. Caius could not unravel this, and yet, deep within him, he knew that there was consistency in it. Had she not said that love in itself was good? it must be good, then, both to the giver and receiver. He felt a certain awe at finding his own poor love embraced in such a doctrine; he felt for the first time how gross and selfish, how unworthy, it was.

It was now the end of March; the snow was melting; the ice was breaking; it might be three or four weeks before ships could sail in the gulf, but it would not be longer. There was no sign of further outbreak of diphtheria upon the island. Caius felt the time of his going home to be near; he was not glad to think of leaving his prison of ice. Two distinct efforts were made at this time to entertain him.

O'Shea made an expedition to the island of the picture rocks, and, in rough kindliness, insisted upon taking Caius with him, not to see the rocks—O'Shea thought little of them. They had an exciting journey, rowing between the ice-floes in the bay, carrying their boat over one ice fragment and then another, launching it each time into a sea of dangers. They spent a couple of days entertained by the chief man of this island, and came back again at the same delightful jeopardy of their lives.

After this Mr. Pembroke took Caius home with him, driving again over the sand-dune, upon which, now that the drifts had almost melted, a road could be made. All winter the dunes had been absolutely deserted, impassable by reason of the depth of snow. It would seem that even the devil himself must have left their valleys at this time, or have hibernated. The chief interest to Caius in this expedition was to seek the hollow where he had seen, or thought he had seen, the band of mysterious men to which O'Shea introduced him; but so changed was the appearance of the sand by reason of the streams and rivulets of melting snow, and so monotonous was the dune, that he grew confused, and could not in the least tell where the place had been. He paid a visit to Pembroke's house, and to the inn kept by the old maids, and then went back to his own little wooden domicile with renewed contentment in its quaint appointments, in its solitude, but above all in its nearness to that other house in which the five women lived guarded by the mastiffs.

Caius knew well enough that these plans for his amusement had been instigated by Madame Le Maitre. She was keeping out of his way, except that now and then he met her upon the roads and exchanged with her a friendly greeting.

The only satisfaction that Caius sought for himself at this time was an occasional visit to O'Shea's house. All winter there had been growing upon him a liking for the man's wife, although the words that he exchanged with her were at all times few. Now the feeling that he and she were friends had received a distinct increase. It was a long time since Caius had put to anyone the questions which his mind was constantly asking concerning Madame Le Maitre. Apart from any thought of talking about the object of their mutual regard, it was a comfort to him to be in the presence of O'Shea's wife. He felt sure that she understood her mistress better than anyone else did, and he also suspected her of a lively sympathy with himself, although it was not probable that she knew more concerning his relation to Josephine Le Maitre than merely the fact that it would be hard for any man to see so much grace and beauty and remain insensible. Caius sat by this woman's hearth, and whittled tops and boats for her children on the sunny doorstep when the days grew warm at noon, and did not expect any guerdon for doing it except the rest that he found in the proximity and occupation. Reward came to him, however. The woman eyed him with more and more kindliness, and at length she spoke.

It was one day towards the end of the month, when the last film of snow had evaporated from many a field and slope, and the vivid green of grass appeared for the first time to gladden the eyes, although many an ice-wreath and snowy hollow still lay between. On such a day the sight of a folded head of saxifrage from which the pearls are just breaking makes the heart of man bound with a pleasure that has certainly no rational cause which is adequate.

Caius came up from the western shore, where he had been watching a distant ship that passed on the other side of the nearer ice-floes, and which said, by no other signal than that of her white sails, that winter was gone. The sea, whose rivers and lakes among the ice had of late looked so turbid by reason of frozen particles in the water, was clear now to reflect once more the blue above it, and the ice-cakes were very white in the sunshine. Caius turned his back upon this, and came up a stony path where large patches of the hill were green; and by chance he came upon O'Shea's wife, who was laying out linen to bleach at some distance from her own house. Close to her Caius saw the ledge of rock on which the first flowers of the year were budding, and straightway fell in love with them. Knowing that their plants would flourish indoors as well as out, he stooped to lift the large cakes of moss in which their roots were set. The woman, who wore a small pink shawl tied over her head and shoulders, came near to where he was stooping, and made no preface, but said:

"He's dead, sir; or if he isn't, and if he should come back, O'Shea will kill him!"

Caius did not need to ask of whom she spoke.

"Why?" he asked. "Why should O'Shea want to kill him?"

"It would kill her, sir, if he came back to her. She couldn't abide him no ways, and O'Shea says it's as good one murder should be done as another, and if he was hung for it he wouldn't mind. O'Shea's the sort of man that would keep his word. He'd just feel it was a kind of interesting thing to do, and he worships her to that extent. But I feel sure, sir, that Le Maitre is dead. God would not be so unkind as to have me and the children bereft in that way."

Her simple belief in her husband's power to settle the matter was shocking to Caius, because he felt that she probably knew her husband perfectly.

"But why," said he again, "would it kill her if he came back?"

"Well, what sort of a decent man is it that would have stayed away from her all these years, poor lamb? Why, sir, she wasn't but a child at the convent when her father had them married, and she back to school, and he away to his ship, and never come to see her since."

Caius turned as he knelt upon the grass, and, holding the emerald moss and saxifrage plants in his hand, looked up at her. "He went away two years ago," he said, repeating defiantly what he believed he had heard.

"He went away six year ago," corrected she; "but it's two years now since aught was heard of him, and his ship went down, sir, coming back from Afriky—that we know; but word came that the crew were saved, but never a word from him, nor a word of him, since."

"Did she"—his throat would hardly frame the words—a nervous spasm impeded them; yet he could not but ask—"did she care for him?"

"Oh well, sir, as to that, he was a beautiful-looking man, and she but a child; but when she came to herself she wrote and asked him never to come back; she told me so; and he never did."

"Well, that at least was civil of him." Caius spoke in full earnest.

"No, sir; he's not civil; he's a beast of a man. There's no sort of low trick that he hasn't done, only it can't be proved against him; for he's the sort of beast that is a snake; he only married madame for the money he'll get with her. It was when she learned that that she wrote to him not to come back; but he never sent an honest word to say whether he'd stay away or not. She knows what he is, sir, for folks that he'd cheated and lied to come to her to complain. Young as she is, there's white threads in her hair, just to think that he might come back at any time. It's making an old woman of her since she's come of an age to think; and she the merriest, blithest creature that ever was. When she first came out of the convent, to see her dance and sing was a sight to make old eyes young."

"Yes," said Caius eagerly, "I know it was—I am sure it was."

"Oh, but you never saw her, sir, till the shadow had come on her."

"Do you know when it was I first saw her?" said Caius, looking down at the grass.

"She told me 'twas when she went to Prince Edward's Land, the time she went to see the wife of her father's brother. 'Twas the one time that O'Shea let her out of his sight; but no one knew where she was, so if the Captain had come at that time he couldn't have found her without coming to O'Shea first. And the other time that O'Shea let her go was the first winter she came here, for he knew no one could come at the islands for the snow, and we followed by the first ship in spring."

"Couldn't she get a separation?"

"O'Shea says the law is that way made that she couldn't."

"If she changed her name and went away somewhere——" Caius spoke thoughtfully.

"And that's what O'Shea has been at her to do, for at least it would give her peace; but she says, no, she'll do what's open and honest, and God will take care of her. And I'm sure I hope He will. But it's hard, sir, to see a young thing, so happy by nature as her, taking comfort in nothing but prayers and hymns and good works, so young as she is; it's enough to make the angels themselves have tears in their eyes to see it."

At this the woman was wiping her own eyes; and, making soft sniffing sounds of uncultivated grief, she went back to her work of strewing wet garments upon the grass.

Caius felt that O'Shea's wife had read the mind of the angels aright.



CHAPTER V.

TO THE HIGHER COURT.

If Caius, as he went his way carrying the moss and budding flowers, could have felt convinced with O'Shea's wife that Le Maitre was dead, he would have been a much happier man. He could not admit the woman's logic. Still, he was far happier than he had been an hour before. Le Maitre might be dead. Josephine did not love Le Maitre. He felt that now, at least, he understood her life.

Having the flowers, the very first darlings of the spring, in his hand, he went, in the impulse of the new sympathy, and knocked at her house door. He carried his burden of moss, earth, moisture, and little gray scaly insects that, having been disturbed, crawled in and out of it, boldly into the room, whose walls were still decorated with the faded garlands of the previous autumn.

"Let me talk to you," said Caius.

The lady and the one young girl who happened to be with her had bestirred themselves to receive his gift. Making a platter serve as the rock-ledge from which the living things had been disturbed, they set them in the window to grow and unfold the more quickly. They had brought him a bowl also in which to wash his hands, and then it was that he looked at the lady of the house and made his request.

He hardly thought she would grant it; he felt almost breathless with his own hardihood when he saw her dismiss the girl and sit before him to hear what he might have to say. He knew then that had he asked her to talk to him he would have translated the desire of his heart far better.

"O'Shea's wife has been talking to me," he said.

"About me?"

"I hope you will forgive us. I think she could not help speaking, and I could not help listening."

"What did she say?"

It was the absolutely childlike directness of her thoughts and words that always seemed to Caius to be the thing that put the greatest distance between them.

"I could not tell you what she said; I would not dare to repeat it to you, and perhaps she would not wish you to know; but you know she is loyal to you, and what I can tell you is, that I understand better now what your life is—what it has been."

Then he held out his hands with an impulsive gesture towards her. The large table was between them; it was only a gesture, and he let his hands lie on the table. "Let me be your friend; you may trust me," he said. "I am only a very ordinary man; but still, the best friendship I have I offer. You need not be afraid of me."

"I am not afraid of you." She said it with perfect tranquillity.

He did not like her answer.

"Are we friends, then?" he asked, and tried to smile, though he felt that some unruly nerve was painting the heaviness of his heart in his face.

"How do you mean it? O'Shea and his wife are my friends, each of them in a very different way——" She was going on, but he interrupted:

"They are your friends because they would die to serve you; but have you never had friends who were your equals in education and intelligence?" He was speaking hastily, using random words to suggest that more could be had out of such a relation than faithful service.

"Are you my equal in intelligence and education?" she asked appositely, laughter in her eyes.

He had time just for a momentary flash of self-wonder that he should so love a woman who, when she did not keep him at some far distance, laughed at him openly. He stammered a moment, then smiled, for he could not help it.

"I would not care to claim that for myself," he said.

"Rather," she suggested, "let us frankly admit that you are the superior in both."

He was sitting at the table, his elbows upon it, and now he covered his face with his hands, half in real, half in mock, despair:

"What can I do or say?" he groaned. "What have I done that you will not answer the honest meaning you can understand in spite of my clumsy words?"

Then he had to look at her because she did not answer, and when he saw that she was still ready to laugh, he laughed, too.

"Have you never ceased to despise me because I could not swim? I can swim now, I assure you. I have studied the art. I could even show you a prize that I took in a race, if that would win your respect."

"I am glad you took the prize."

"I have not yet learned the magic with which mermaids move."

"No, and you have not heard any excuse for the boldness of that play yet. And I was almost the cause of your death. Ah! how frightened I was that night—of you and for you! And again when I went to see Mr. Pembroke before the snow came, and the storm came on and I was obliged to travel with you in O'Shea's great-coat—that again cannot seem nice to you when you think of it. Why do you like what appears so strange? You came here to do a noble work, and you have done it nobly. Why not go home now, and be rid of such a suspicious character as I have shown myself to be? Wherever you go, our prayers and our blessings will follow you."

Caius looked down at the common deal board. There were dents and marks upon it that spoke of constant household work. At length he said:

"There is one reason for going that would seem to me enough: if you will tell me that you neither want nor need my companionship or help in any way; but if you cannot tell me that——"

"Want," she said very sadly. "Ah, do you think I have no heart, no mind that likes to talk its thoughts, no sympathies? I think that if anyone—man, woman, or child—were to come to me from out the big world, where people have such thoughts and feelings as I have, and offer to talk to me, I could not do anything else than desire their companionship. Do you think that I am hard-hearted? I am so lonely that the affection even of a dog or a bird would be a temptation to me, if it was a thing that I dared not accept, because it would make me weaker to live the life that is right. That is the way we must tell what is right or wrong."

In spite of himself, he gathered comfort from the fact that, pausing here, without adequate reason that was apparent, she took for granted that the friendship he offered would be a source of weakness to her.

She never stooped to try to appear reasonable. As she had been speaking, a new look had been coming out of the habitual calmness of her face, and now, in the pause, the calm went suddenly, and there was a flash of fire in her eyes that he had never seen there before:

"If I were starving, would you come and offer me bread that you knew I ought not to eat? It would be cruel." She rose up suddenly, and he stood before her. "It is cruel of you to tantalize me with thoughts of happiness because you know I must want it so much. I could not live and not want it. Go! you are doing a cowardly thing. You are doing what the devil did when our Lord was in the wilderness. But He did not need the bread He was asked to take, and I do not need your friendship. Go!"

She held out the hand—the hand that had so often beckoned to him in play—and pointed him to the door. He knew that he was standing before a woman who had been irritated by inward pain into a sudden gust of anger, and now, for the first time, he was not afraid of her. In losing her self-control she had lost her control of him.

"Josephine," he cried, "tell me about this man, Le Maitre! He has no right over you. Why do you think he is not dead? At least, tell me what you know."

It seemed that, in the confusion of conflicting emotions, she hardly wondered why he had not obeyed her.

"Oh, he is not dead!" She spoke with bitterness. "I have no reason to suppose so. He only leaves me in suspense that he may make me the more miserable." And then, as if realizing what she had said, she lifted her head again proudly. "But remember it is nothing to you whether he is alive or dead."

"Nothing to me to know that you would be freed from this horrible slavery! It is not of my own gain, but of yours, I am thinking."

He knew that what he had said was not wholly true, yet, in the heat of the moment, he knew that to embody in words the best that might be was to give himself the best chance of realizing it; and he did not believe now that her fierce assertion of indifference for him was true either, but his best self applauded her for it. For a minute he could not tell what Josephine would do next. She stood looking at him helplessly; it seemed as though her subsiding anger had left a fear of herself in its place. But what he dreaded most was that her composure should return.

"Do not be angry with me," he said; "I ask because it is right that I should know. Can you not get rid of this bond of marriage?"

"Do you think," she asked, "that the good God and the Holy Virgin would desire me to put myself—my life—all that is sacred—into courts and newspapers? Do you think the holy Mother of God—looking down upon me, her child—wants me to get out of trouble in that way?" Josephine had asked the question first in distress; then, with a face of peerless scorn, she seemed to put some horrid scene from before her with her hand. "The dear God would rather I would drown myself," she said; "it would at least be"—she hesitated for a word, as if at a loss in her English—"at least be cleaner."

She had no sooner finished that speech than the scorn died out of her face:

"Ah, no," she cried repentant; "the men and women who are driven to seek such redress—I—I truly pity them—but for me—it would not be any use even if it were right. O'Shea says it would be no use, and he knows. I don't think I would do it if I could; but I could not if I would."

"Surely he is dead," pleaded Caius. "How can you live if you do not believe that?"

She came a little nearer to him, making the explanation with child-like earnestness:

"You see, I have talked to God and to the holy Mother about this. I know they have heard my prayers and seen my tears, and will do what is good for me. I ask God always that Le Maitre may not come back to me, so now I know that if" (a gasping sigh retarded for a moment the breath that came and went in her gentle bosom) "if he does come back it will be God's will. Who am I that I should know best? Shall I choose to be what you call a 'missionary' to the poor and sick—and refuse God's will? God can put an end to my marriage if He will; until He does, I will do my duty to my husband: I will till the land that he left idle; I will honour the name he gave me. I dare not do anything except what is very, very right, because I have appealed to the Court of Heaven. You asked me just now if I did not want and need friendship; it does not matter at all what I want, and whatever God does not give me you may be sure I do not need."

He knew that the peace he dreaded had come back to her. She had gone back to the memory of her strength. Now he obeyed the command she had given before, and went out.



CHAPTER VI.

"THE NIGHT IS DARK."

Caius went home to his house. Inconsistency is the hall-mark of real in distinction from unreal life. A note of happy music was sounding in his heart. The bright spring evening seemed all full of joy. He saw a flock of gannets stringing out in long line against the red evening sky, and knew that all the feathered population of the rocks was returning to its summer home. Something more than the mere joy of the season was making him glad; he hardly knew what it was, for it appeared to him that circumstances were untoward.

It was in vain that he reasoned that there was no cause for joy in the belief that Josephine took delight in his society; that delight would only make her lot the harder, and make for him the greater grievance. He might as well have reasoned with himself that there was no cause for joy in the fact of the spring; he was so created that such things made up the bliss of life to him.

Caius did not himself think that Josephine owed any duty to La Maitre; he could only hope, and try to believe, that the man was dead. Reason, common-sense, appeared to him to do away with what slight moral or religious obligation was involved in such a marriage; yet he was quite sure of one thing—that this young wife, left without friend or protector, would have been upon a very much lower level if she had thought in the manner as he did. He knew now that from the first day he had seen her the charm of her face had been that he read in it a character that was not only wholly different to, but nobler than, his own. He reflected now that he should not love her at all if she took a stand less high in its sweet unreasonableness, and his reason for this was simply that, had she done otherwise, she would not have been Josephine.

The thought that Josephine was what she was intoxicated him; all the next day time and eternity seemed glorious to him. The islands were still ringed with the pearly ring of ice-floes, and for one brief spring day, for this lover, it was enough to be yet imprisoned in the same bit of green earth with his lady, to think of all the noble things she had said and done, and, by her influence, to see new vistas opening into eternity in which they two walked together. There was even some self-gratulation that he had attained to faith in Heaven. He was one of those people who always suppose that they would be glad to have faith if they could. It was not faith, however, that had come to him, only a refining and quickening of his imagination.

Quick upon the heels of these high dreams came their test, for life is not a dream.

Between the Magdalen Islands and the mainland, besides the many stray schooners that came and went, there were two lines of regular communication—one was by a sailing vessel which carried freight regularly to and from the port of Gaspe; the other was by a small packet steamer that once a week came from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward's Island, and returned by the same route. It was by this steamer, on her first appearance, that Caius ought reasonably to return to his home. She would come as soon as the ice diminished; she would bring him news, withheld for four months, of how his parents had fared in his absence. Caius had not yet decided that he would go home by the first trip; the thought of leaving, when it forced itself upon him, was very painful. This steamer was the first arrival expected, and the islanders, eager for variety and mails, looked excitedly to see the ice melt or be drifted away. Caius looked at the ice ring with more intense longing, but his longing was that it should remain. His wishes, like prayers, besought the cold winds and frosty nights to conserve it for him.

It so happened that the Gaspe schooner arrived before the southern packet, and lay outside of the ice, waiting until she could make her way through. So welcome was the sight that the islanders gathered upon the shores of the bay just for the pleasure of looking at her as she lay without the harbour. Caius looked at her, too, and with comparative indifference, for he rejoiced that he was still in prison.

Upon that day the night fell just as it falls upon all days; but at midnight Caius had a visitor. O'Shea came to him in the darkness.

Caius was awakened from sound sleep by a muffled thumping at his door that was calculated to disturb him without carrying sharp sound into the surrounding air. His first idea was that some drunken fellow had blundered against his wall by mistake. As the sounds continued and the full strangeness of the event, in that lonely place, entered his waking brain, he arose with a certain trepidation akin to that which one feels at the thought of supernatural visitors, a feeling that was perhaps the result of some influence from the spirit of the man outside the door; for when he opened it, and held his candle to O'Shea's face, he saw a look there that made him know certainly that something was wrong.

O'Shea came in and shut the door behind him, and went into the inner room and sat down on the foot of the bed. Caius followed, holding the candle, and inspected him again.

"Sit down, man." O'Shea made an impatient gesture at the light. "Get into bed, if ye will; there's no hurry that I know of."

Caius stood still, looking at the farmer, and such nervousness had come upon him that he was almost trembling with fear, without the slightest notion as yet of what he feared.

"In the name of Heaven——" he began.

"Yes, Heaven!" O'Shea spoke with hard, meditative inquiry. "It's Heaven she trusts in. What's Heaven going to do for her, I'd loike to know?"

"What is it?" The question now was hoarse and breathless.

"Well, I'll tell you what it is if ye'll give me time"—the tone was sarcastic—"and you needn't spoil yer beauty by catching yer death of cold. 'Tain't nicessary, that I know of. There's things that are nicessary; there's things that will be nicessary in the next few days; but that ain't."

For the first time Caius did not resent the caustic manner. Its sharpness was turned now towards an impending fate, and to Caius O'Shea had come as to a friend in need. Mechanically he sat in the middle of the small bed, and huddled its blankets about him. The burly farmer, in fur coat and cap, sat in wooden-like stillness; but Caius was like a man in a fever, restless in his suspense. The candle, which he had put upon the floor, cast up a yellow light on all the scant furniture, on the two men as they thus talked to each other, with pale, tense faces, and threw distorted shadows high up on the wooden walls.

Perhaps it was a relief to O'Shea to torture Caius some time with this suspense. At last he said: "He's in the schooner."

"Le Maitre? How do you know?"

"Well, I'll tell ye how I know. I told ye there was no hurry."

If he was long now in speaking, Caius did not know it. Upon his brain crowded thoughts and imaginations: wild plans for saving the woman he loved; wild, unholy desires of revenge; and a wild vision of misery in the background as yet—a foreboding that the end might be submission to the worst pains of impotent despair.

O'Shea had taken out a piece of paper, but did not open it.

"'Tain't an hour back I got this. The skipper of the schooner and me know each other. He's been bound over by me to let me know if that man ever set foot in his ship to come to this place, and he's managed to get a lad off his ship in the noight, and across the ice, and he brought me this. Le Maitre, he's drunk, lyin' in his bunk; that's the way he's preparing to come ashore. It may be one day, it may be two, afore the schooner can get in. Le Maitre he won't get off it till it's in th' harbour. I guess that's about all there is to tell." O'Shea added this with grim abstinence from fiercer comment.

"Does she know?" Caius' throat hardly gave voice to the words.

"No, she don't; and I don't know who is to tell her. I can't. I can do most things." He looked up round the walls and ceiling, as if hunting in his mind for other things he could not do. "I'll not do that. 'Tain't in my line. My wife is adown on her knees, mixing up prayers and crying at a great rate; and says I to her, 'You've been a-praying about this some years back; I'd loike to know what good it's done. Get up and tell madame the news;' and says she that she couldn't, and she says that in the morning you're to tell her." O'Shea set his face in grim defiance of any sentiment of pity for Caius that might have suggested itself.

Caius said nothing; but in a minute, grasping at the one straw of hope which he saw, "What are you going to do?" he asked.

O'Shea smoothed out the letter he held.

"Well, you needn't speak so quick; it's just that there I thought we might have our considerations upon. I'm not above asking advoice of a gintleman of the world like yerself; I'm not above giving advoice, neither."

He sat looking vacantly before him with a grim smile upon his face. Caius saw that his mind was made up.

"What are you going to do?" he asked again.

At the same moment came the sharp consciousness upon him that he himself was a murderer, that he wanted to have Le Maitre murdered, that his question meant that he was eager to be made privy to the plot, willing to abet it. Yet he did not feel wicked at all; before his eyes was the face of Josephine lying asleep, unconscious and peaceful. He felt that he fought in a cause in which a saint might fight.

"What I may or may not do," said O'Shea, "is neither here nor there just now. The first thing is, what you're going to do. The schooner's out there to the north-east; the boat that's been used for the sealing is over here to the south-west; now, there ain't no sinse, that I know of, in being uncomfortable when it can be helped, or in putting ourselves about for a brute of a man who ain't worth it. It's plain enough what's the easy thing to do. To-morrow morning ye'll make out that ye can't abide no longer staying in this dull hole, and offer the skipper of one of them sealing-boats fifty dollars to have the boat across the ice and take you to Souris. Then ye will go up and talk plain common-sinse to madame, and tell her to put on her man's top-coat she's worn before, and skip out of this dirty fellow's clutches. There ain't nothing like being scared out of their wits for making women reasonable—it's about the only time they have their sinses, so far as I know."

"If she won't come, what then?" Caius demanded hastily.

"My woife says that if ye're not more of a fool than we take ye for, she'll go."

There was something in the mechanical repetition of what his wife had said that made Caius suspect.

"You don't think she'll go?"

O'Shea did not answer.

"That is what you'll do, any way," he said; "and ye'll do it the best way ye know how."

He sat upon the bed some time longer, wrapped in grim reserve. The candle guttered, flared, burned itself out. The two men were together in the dark. Caius believed that if the first expedient failed, and he felt it could not but fail, murder was their only resource against what seemed to them intolerable evil.

O'Shea got up.

"Perhaps ye think the gintleman that is coming has redeeming features about him?" A fine edge of sarcasm was in his tone. "Well, he hain't. Before we lost sight of him, I got word concarning him from one part of the world and another. If I haven't got the law of him, it's because he's too much of a sneak. He wasn't anything but a handsome sort of beast to begin with; and, what with drinking and the life he's led, he's grown into a sort of thing that had better go on all fours like Nebuchadnezzar than come nigh decent people on his hind-legs. Why has he let her alone all these years?" The speech was grimly dramatic. "Why, just because, first place, I believe another woman had the upper hand of him; second place, when he married madame it was the land and money her father had to leave her that made him make that bargain. He hadn't that in him that would make him care for a white slip of a girl as she was then, and, any way, he knew that the girl and the money would keep till he was sick of roving. It's as nasty a trick as could be that he's served her, playing dead dog all these years, and coming to catch her unawares. I tell ye the main thing he has on his mind is revenge for the letters she wrote him when she first got word of his tricks, and then, too, he's coming back to carouse on her money and the money she's made on his father's land, that he niver looked to himself."

O'Shea stalked through the small dark rooms and went out, closing the outer door gently behind him. Caius sat still, wrapped in his blankets. He bowed his head upon his knees. The darkness was only the physical part of the blackness that closed over his spirit. There was only one light in this blackness—that was Josephine's face. Calm he saw it, touched with the look of devotion or mercy; laughing and dimpled he saw it, a thing at one with the sunshine and all the joy of earth; and then he saw it change, and grow pale with fear, and repulsion, and disgust. Around this one face, that carried light with it, there were horrid shapes and sounds in the blackness of his mind. He had been a good man; he had preferred good to evil: had it all been a farce? Was the thing that he was being driven to do now a thing of satanic prompting, and he himself corrupt—all the goodness which he had thought to be himself only an organism, fair outside, that rotted inwardly? Or was this fear the result of false teaching, the prompting of an artificial conscience, and was the thing he wished to do the wholesome and natural course to take—right in the sight of such Deity as might be beyond the curtain of the unknown, the Force who had set the natural laws of being in motion? Caius did not know. While his judgment was in suspense he was beset by horrible fears—the fear that he might be driven to do a villainous deed, the greater fear that he should not accomplish it, the awful fear, rising above all else in his mind, of seeing Josephine overtaken by the horrible fate which menaced her, and he himself still alive to feel her misery and his own.

No, rather than that he would himself kill the man. It was not the part that had been assigned to him, but if she would not save herself it would be the noblest thing to do. Was he to allow O'Shea, with a wife and children, to involve himself in such dire trouble, when he, who had no one dependent upon him, could do the deed, and take what consequences might be? He felt a glow of moral worth like that which he had felt when he decided upon his mission to the island—greater, for in that his motives had been mixed and sordid, and in this his only object was to save lives that were of more worth than his own. Should he kill the man, he would hardly escape death, and even if he did, he could never look Josephine in the face again.

Why not? Why, if this deed were so good, could he not, after the doing of it, go back to her and read gratitude in her eyes? Because Josephine's standard of right and wrong was different from his. What was her standard? His mind cried out an impatient answer. "She believes it is better to suffer than to be happy." He did not believe that; he would settle this matter by his own light, and, by freeing her and saving her faithful friends, be cut off from her for ever.

It would be an easy thing to do, to go up to the man and put a knife in his heart, or shoot him like a dog!

His whole being revolted from the thought; when the deed came before his eyes, it seemed to him that only in some dark feverish imagination could he have dreamed of acting it out, that of course in plain common-sense, that daylight of the mind, he could not will to do this.

Then he thought again of the misery of the suffering wife, and he believed that, foreign as it was to his whole habit of life, he could do this, even this, to save her.

Then again came over him the sickening dread that the old rules of right and wrong that he had been taught were the right guides after all, and that Josephine was right, and that he must submit.

The very thought of submission made his soul rise up in a mad tempest of anger against such a moral law, against all who taught it, against the God who was supposed to ordain it; and so strong was the tempest of this wrath, and so weak was he, perplexed, wretched, that he would have been glad even at the same moment to have appealed to the God of his fathers, with whom he was quarrelling, for counsel and help. His quarrel was too fierce for that. His quarrel with God made trust, made mere belief even, impossible, and he was aware that it was not new, that this was only the culminating hour of a long rebellion.



CHAPTER VII.

THE WILD WAVES WHIST.

Next morning, when Caius walked forth into the glory of the April sunshine, he felt himself to be a poor, wretched man. There was not a fisherman upon the island, lazy, selfish as they were, and despised in his eyes, that did not appear to him to be a better man than he. All the force of training and habit made the thing that he was going to do appear despicable; but all the force of training and habit was not strong enough to make his judgment clear or direct his will.

The muddy road was beginning to steam in the sunshine; the thin shining ice of night that coated its puddles was melting away. In the green strip by the roadside he saw the yellow-tufted head of a dandelion just level with the grass. The thicket of stunted firs on either side smelt sweet, and beyond them he saw the ice-field that dazzled his eyes, and the blue sea that sparkled. From this side he could not see the bay and the ship of fate lying at anchor, but he noticed with relief that the ice was not much less.

There was no use in thinking or feeling; he must go on and do what was to be done. So he told himself. He shut his heart against the influence of the happy earth; he felt like a guest bidden by fate, who knew not whether the feast were to be for bridal or funeral. That he was not a strong man was shown in this—that having hoped and feared, dreamed and suffered, struggling to see a plain path where no path was, for half the night, he now felt that his power of thought and feeling had burned out, that he could only act his part, without caring much what its results might be.

It was eight o'clock. He had groomed his horse, and tidied his house, and bathed, and breakfasted. He did not think it seemly to intrude upon the lady before this hour, and now he ascended her steps and knocked at her door. The dogs thumped their tails on the wooden veranda; it was only of late they had learned this welcome for him. Would they give it now, he wondered, if they could see his heart? As he stood there waiting for a minute, he felt that it would be good, if possible, to have laid his dilemma fairly before the canine sense and heart, and to have let the dogs rise and tear him or let him pass, as they judged best. It was a foolish fancy.

It was O'Shea's wife who opened the door; her face was disfigured by crying.

"You have told her?" demanded Caius, with relief.

The woman shook her head.

"It was the fine morning that tempted her out, sir," she said. "She sent down to me, saying how she had taken a cup of milk and gone to ride on the beach, and I was to come up and look after the girls. But look here, sir"—eagerly—"it's a good thing, I'm thinking, for her spirits are high when she rides in fine weather, and she's more ready for games and plays, and thinking of pleasure. She's gone on the west shore, round by the light, for O'Shea he looked at the tracks. Do you get your horse and ride after, where you see her tracks in the sand."

Caius went. He mounted his horse and rode down upon the western shore. He found the track, and galloped upon it. The tide was low; the ice was far from shore; the highway, smoothed by the waves, was firm and good. Caius galloped to the end of the island where the light was, where the sealing vessels lay round the base of the lighthouse, and out upon the dune, and still the print of her horse's feet went on in front of him. It was not the first time that he and she had been upon the dune together.

A mile, two miles, three; he rode at an easy pace, for now he knew that he could not miss the rider before him. He watched the surf break gently on the broad shallow reach of sand-ridges that lay between him and the floating ice. And when he had ridden so far he was not the same man as when he mounted his horse, or at least, his own soul, of which man has hardly permanent possession, had returned to him. He could now see, over the low mists of his own moods, all the issues of Josephine's case—all, at least, that were revealed to him; for souls are of different stature, and it is as the head is high or low that the battlefield is truly discerned.

Long before he met her he saw Josephine. She had apparently gone as far as she thought wise, and was amusing herself by making her horse set his feet in the cold surf. It was a game with the horse and the wavelets that she was playing. Each time he danced back and sunned himself he had to go in again; and when he stood, his hind-feet on the sand and his fore-feet reared over the foam, by way of going where she wished and keeping himself dry, Caius could see her gestures so well that it seemed to him he heard the tones of playful remonstrance with which she argued the case.

When she perceived that Caius intended to come up to her, she rode to meet him. Her white cap had been taken off and stuffed into the breast of her dress; the hood surrounded her face loosely, but did not hide it; her eyes were sparkling with pleasure—the pure animal pleasure of life and motion, the sensuous pleasure in the beauty and the music of the waves; other pleasures there might be, but these were certain, and predominated.

"Why did you come?"

She asked the question as a happy child might ask of its playmate—no hint of danger.

To Caius it was a physical impossibility to answer this question with the truth just then.

"Is not springtime an answer?" he asked, then added: "I am going away to-day. I came for one last ride."

She looked at him for a few moments, evidently supposing that he intended to go to Harbour Island to wait there for his ship. If that were so, it seemed that she felt no further responsibility about her conduct to him. His heart sank to see that her joy in the spring and the morning was such that the thought of parting did not apparently grieve her much.

In a moment more her eyes flashed at him with the laughter at his expense which he knew so well; she tried not to laugh as she spoke, but could not help it.

"I have been visiting the band of men who were going to murder you the night you came. Would you like to see them?"

"If you will take care of me."

As she turned and rode before him he heard her laughing.

"There," she said, stopping and pointing to the ground—"there is the place where the quicksand was. I have not gone over it this morning. Sometimes they last from one season to another; sometimes they change themselves in a few days. I was dreadfully frightened when we began to sink, but it was you who saved the pony."

"Don't," said Caius—"don't attempt to make the best of me. I would rather be laughed at." He spoke lightly, without feeling, and that seemed to please her.

"I think," she said candidly, "we behaved very badly; but it was O'Shea's fault—I only enjoyed it. And I don't see what else we could have done, because those two French sailors had to watch if anyone came to steal from the wreck, and they were going to help us so far as to go to the sheds on the cliff for boards to get up the cart; but O'Shea could not have stayed all night with the bags unless I had left him my coat as well as his own."

"You might have trusted me," said Caius. Still he spoke with no sensibility; she grew more at her ease.

"O'Shea wouldn't; and I couldn't control O'Shea. And then we had to meet so often, that I could not bear that you should know I had worn a man's coat. I had to do it, for I couldn't drive home any other way." Here a pause, and her mind wandered to another recollection. "Those men we met brought us word that one of my friends was so ill; I had to hurry to him. In my heart I thought you would not respect me because I had worn a man's coat; and because—— Yes, it was very naughty of me indeed to behave as I did in the water that summer. Even then I did try to get O'Shea to let me walk with you, but he wouldn't."

She had been slowly riding through a deep, soft sand-drift that was heaped at the mouth of the hollow, and when they had got through the opening, Caius saw the ribs of one side of an enormous wreck protruding from the sand, about six feet in height. A small hardy weed had grown upon their heads in tufts; withered and sear with the winter, it still hung there. The ribs bent over a little, as the men he had seen had bent.

"The cloud-shadows and the moonlight were very confusing," remarked Josephine; "and then O'Shea made the two sailors stand in the same way, and they were real. I never knew a man like O'Shea for thinking of things that are half serious and half funny. I never knew him yet fail to find a way to do the thing he wanted to do; and it's always a way that makes me laugh."

If Josephine would not come away with him, would O'Shea find a way of killing Le Maitre? and would it be a way to make her laugh? With the awful weight of the tidings he brought upon his heart, all that he said or did before he told them seemed artificial.

"I thought"—half mechanically—"that I saw them all hold up their hands."

"Did you?" she asked. "The first two did; O'Shea told them to hold up their hands."

"There is something you said a minute ago that I want to answer," he said.

She thought he had left the subject of his illusion because it mortified him.

"You said"—he began now to feel emotion as he spoke—"that you thought I should not respect you. I want to tell you that I respected you as I respect my mother, even when you were only a mermaid. I saw you when I fell that night as we walked on this beach. If you had worn a boy's coat, or a fishskin, always, I had sense enough to see that it was a saint at play. Have you read all the odd stories about the saints and the Virgin—how they appear and vanish, and wear odd clothes, and play beneficent tricks with people? It was like that to me. I don't know how to say it, but I think when good people play, they have to be very, very good, or they don't really enjoy it. I don't know how to explain it, but the moderate sort of goodness spoils everything."

Caius, when he had said this, felt that it was something he had never thought before; and, whatever it might mean, he felt instinctively that it meant a great deal more than he knew. He felt a little shabby at having expressed it from her religious point of view, in which he had no part; but his excuse was that there was in his mind at least the doubt that she might be right, and, whether or not, his mission just then was to gain her confidence. He brushed scruples aside for the end in view.

"I am glad you said that," she said. "I am not good, but I should like to be. It wasn't becoming to play a mermaid, but I didn't think of that then. I didn't know many things then that I know now. You see, my uncle's wife drowned her little child; and afterwards, when she was ill, I went to take care of her, and we could not let anyone know, because the police would have interfered for fear she would drown me. But she is quite harmless, poor thing! It is only that time stopped for her when the child was drowned, and she thinks its little body is in the water yet, if we could only find it. I found she had made that dress you call a fishskin with floats on it for herself, and she used to get into the sea, from the opening of an old cellar, at night, and push herself about with a pole. It was the beautiful wild thing that only a mad person with nice thoughts could do. But when she was ill, I played with it, for I had nothing else to do; it was desecration."

"I thought you were like the child that was lost. I think you are like her."

"She thought so, too; she used to think sometimes that I was her little daughter grown up. It was very strange, living with her; I almost think I might have gone mad, too, if I hadn't played with you."

It was very strange, Caius thought, that on this day of all days she should be willing to talk to him about herself, should be willing to laugh and chat and be happy with him. The one day that he dare not listen long, that he must disturb her peace, was the only time that she had seemed to wish to make a friend of him.

"When you lived so near us," he asked, "did you ever come across the woods and see my father's house? Did you see my father and mother? I think you would like them if you did."

"Oh, no," she said lightly; "I only knew who you were because my aunt talked about you; she never forgot what you had done for the child."

"Do not turn your horse yet." He allowed himself to be urgent now. "I have something to say to you which must be said. I am going home; I do not want to wait for the steamer; I want to bribe one of those sealing vessels to start with me to-day. I have come to ask you if you will not come with me to see my mother. You do not know what it is to have a mother. Mothers are very good; mine is. You would like to be with her, I know; you would have the calm of feeling taken care of, instead of standing alone in the world."

He said all this without letting his tone betray that that double-thoughted mind of his was telling him that this was doubtful, that his mother might be slow to believe in Josephine, and that he was not sure whether Josephine would be attracted by her.

Josephine looked at him with round-eyed surprise; then, apparently conjecturing that the invitation was purely kind, purely stupid, she thanked him, and declined it graciously.

"Is there no folly with which you would not easily credit me?" He smiled faintly in his reproach. "Do you think I do not know what I am saying? I have been awake all night thinking what I could do for you." For a moment he looked at her helplessly, hoping that some hint of the truth would come of itself; then, turning away his face, he said hoarsely: "Le Maitre is on the Gaspe schooner. O'Shea has had the news. He is lying drunk in his berth."

He did not turn until he heard a slight sound. Then he saw that she had slipped down from her horse, perhaps because she was afraid of falling from it. Her face was quite white; there was a drawn look of abject terror upon it; but she only put her horse's rein in his hand, and pointed to the mouth of the little valley.

"Let me be alone a little while," she whispered.

So Caius rode out upon the beach, leading her horse; and there he held both restive animals as still as might be, and waited.



CHAPTER VIII.

"GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN."

Caius wondered how long he ought to wait if she did not come out to him. He wondered if she would die of misery there alone in the sand-dune, or if she would go mad, and meet him in some fantastic humour, all the intelligence scorched out of her poor brain by the cruel words he had said. He had a notion that she had wanted to say her prayers, and, although he did not believe in an answering Heaven, he did believe that prayers would comfort her, and he hoped that that was why she asked to be left.

When he thought of the terror in her eyes, he felt sanguine that she would come with him. Now that he had seen her distress, it seemed to him worse than any notion he had preconceived of it. It was right that she should go with him. When she had once done that, he would stand between her and this man always. That would be enough; if she should never care for him, if he had nothing more than that, he would be satisfied, and the world might think what it would. If she would not go with him—well, then he would kill Le Maitre. His mind was made up; there was nothing left of hesitation or scruple. He looked at the broad sea and the sunlight and the sky, and made his vow with clenched teeth. He laughed at the words which had scared him the night before—the names of the crimes which were his alternatives; they were made righteousness to him by the sight of fear in a woman's face.

It is one form of weakness to lay too much stress upon the emotion of another, just as it is weak to take too much heed of our own emotions; but Caius thought the sympathy that carried all before it was strength.

After awhile, waiting became intolerable. Leading both horses, he walked cautiously back to a point where he could see Josephine. She was sitting upon the sandy bank near where he had left her. He took his cap in his hand, and went with the horses, standing reverently before her. He felt sure now that she had been saying her prayers, because, although her face was still very pallid, she was composed and able to speak. He wished now she had not prayed.

"You are very kind to me." Her voice trembled, but she gave him a little smile. "I cannot pretend that I am not distressed; it would be false, and falsehood is not right. You are very, very kind, and I thank you——"

She broke off, as if she had been going to say something more but had wearily forgotten what it was.

"Oh, do not say that!" His voice was like one pleading to be spared a blow. "I love you. There is no greater joy to me on earth than to serve you."

"Hush," she said; "don't say that. I am very sorry for you, but sorrow must come to us all in some way."

"Don't, don't!" he cried—"don't tell me that suffering is good. It is not good; it is an evil. It is right to shun evil; it is the only right. The other is a horrid fable—a lie concocted by priests and devils!"

"Suppose you loved someone—me, for instance—and I was dead, and you knew quite certainly that by dying you would come to where I was—would you call death good or evil?"

He demurred. He did not want to admit belief in anything connected with the doctrine of submission.

"I said 'suppose,'" she said.

"I would go through far more than death to come near you."

"Suffering is just a gate, like death. We go through it to get the things we really want most."

"I don't believe in a religion that calls suffering better than happiness; but I know you do."

"No, I don't," she said, "and God does not; and people who talk as if He did not want us to seek happiness—even our own happiness—are making to themselves a graven image. I will tell you how I think about it, because I have been alone a great deal and been always very much afraid, and that has made me think a great deal, and you have been very kind, for you risked your life for my poor people, and now you would risk something more than that to help me. Will you listen while I try to tell you?"

Caius signified his assent. He was losing all his hope. He was thinking that when she had done talking he would go and get ready to do murder; but he listened.

"You see," she began, "the greatest happiness is love. Love is greedy to get as well as to give. It is all nonsense talking about love that gives and asks for no return. We only put up with that when we cannot get the other, and why? Why should we think it the grandest thing to give what we would scorn to take? You, for instance—you would rather have a person you loved do nothing for you, yet enjoy you, always demanding your affection and presence, than that he or she should be endlessly generous, and indifferent to what you give in return."

"Yes." He blushed as he said it.

"Well then, it is cant to speak as if the love that asks for no return is the noblest. Now listen. I have something very solemn to say, because it is only by the greatest things that we learn what the little ought to be. When God came to earth to live for awhile, it was for the sake of His happiness and ours; He loved us in the way that I have been saying; He was not content only to bless us, He wanted us to enjoy Him. He wanted that happiness from us; and He wanted us to expect it from Him and from each other; and if we had answered, all would have been like the first marriage feast, where they had the very best wine, and such lots of it. But, you see, we couldn't answer; we had no souls. We were just like the men on Cloud Island who laughed at you when you wanted them to build a hospital. The little self or soul that we had was of that sort that we couldn't even love each other very much with it, and not Him at all. So there was only one way, and that was for us to grow out of these stupid little souls, and get good big ones, that can enjoy God, and enjoy each other, and enjoy everything perfectly." She looked up over the yellow sand-hills into the deep sunny sky, and drew a long breath of the April air involuntarily. "Oh," she said, "a good, big, perfect soul could enjoy so much."

It seemed as if she thought she had said it all and finished the subject.

"Well," said Caius, interested in spite of himself, "if God wanted to make us happy, He could have given us that kind of soul."

"Ah, no! We don't know why things have to grow, but they must; everything grows—you know that. For some reason, that is the best way; so there was just one way for those souls to grow in us, and He showed us how. It is by doing what is quite perfectly right, and bearing all the suffering that comes because of it, and doing all the giving side of love, because here we can't get much. Pain is not good in itself; it is a gate. Our souls are growing all through the gate of the suffering, and when we get to the other side of it, we shall find we have won them. God wants us to be greedy for happiness; but we must find it by going through the gate He went through to show us the way."

Caius stood before her holding the horses; even they had been still while she was speaking, as if listening to the music of her voice. Caius felt the misery of a wavering will and conflicting thoughts.

"If I thought," he said, "that God cared about happiness—just simple happiness—it would make religion seem so much more sensible; but I'm afraid I don't believe in living after death, or that He cares——"

What she said was wholly unreasonable. She put out her hand and took his, as if the hand-clasp were a compact.

"Trust God and see," she said.

There was in her white face such a look of glorious hope, that Caius, half carried away by its inspiration, still quailed before her. After he had wrung her hand, he found himself brushing his sleeve across his eyes. As he thought that he had lost her, thought of all that she would have to endure, of the murder he still longed to commit, and felt all the agony of indecision again, and suspected that after this he would scruple to commit it—when all this came upon him, he turned and leaned against one of the horses, sobbing, conscious in a vague way that he did not wish to stop himself, but only craved her pity.

Josephine comforted him. She did not apparently try to, she did not do or say anything to the purpose; but she evinced such consternation at the sight of his tears, that stronger thoughts came. He put aside his trouble, and helped her to mount her horse.

They rode along the beach slowly together. She was content to go slowly. She looked physically too exhausted to ride fast. Even yet probably, within her heart, the conflict was going forward that had only been well begun in her brief solitude of the sand valley.

Caius looked at her from time to time with feelings of fierce indignation and dejection. The indignation was against Le Maitre, the dejection was wholly upon his own account; for he felt that his plan of help had failed, and that where he had hoped to give strength and comfort, he had only, in utter weakness, exacted pity. Caius had one virtue in these days: he did not admire anything that he did, and he did not even think much about the self he scorned. With regard to Josephine, he felt that if her philosophy of life were true it was not for him to presume to pity her. So vividly had she brought her conception of the use of life before him that it was stamped upon his mind in a brief series of pictures, clear, indelible; and the last picture was one of which he could not think clearly, but it produced in him an idea of the after-life which he had not before.

Then he thought again of the cloud under which Josephine was entering. Her decision would in all probability cut down her bright, useful life to a few short years of struggle and shame and sorrow. At last he spoke:

"But why do you think it right to sacrifice yourself to this man? It does not seem to me right."

He knew then what clearness of thought she had, for she looked with almost horror in her face.

"Sacrifice myself for Le Maitre! Oh no! I should have no right to do that; but to the ideal right, to God—yes. If I withheld anything from God, how could I win my soul?"

"But how do you know God requires this?"

"Ah! I told you before. Why will you not understand? I have prayed. I know God has taken this thing in his own hand."

Caius said no more. Josephine's way of looking at this thing might not be true; that was not what he was considering just then. He knew that it was intensely true for her, would remain true for her until the event of death proved it true or false. This was the factor in the present problem that was the enemy to his scheme. Then, furthermore, whether it were true or false, he knew that there was in his mind the doubt, and that doubt would remain with him, and it would prevent him from killing Le Maitre; it would even prevent him from abetting O'Shea, and he supposed that that abetting would be necessary. Here was cause enough for dejection—that the whole miserable progress of events which he feared most should take place. And why? Because a woman held a glorious faith which might turn out to be delusion, and because he, a man, had not strength to believe for certain that it was a delusion.

It raised no flicker of renewed hope in Caius to meet O'Shea at the turn of the shore where the boats of the seal fishery were drawn up. O'Shea had a brisk look of energy that made it evident that he was still bent upon accomplishing his design. He stopped in front of the lady's horse, and said something to her which Caius did not hear.

"Have ye arranged that little picnic over to Prince Edward's," he called to Caius.

Caius looked at Josephine. O'Shea's mere presence had put much of the spiritual aspect of the case to flight, and he suddenly smarted under the realization that he had never put the question to her since she had known her danger—never put the request to her strongly at all.

"Come," said Josephine; "I am going home. I am going to send all my girls to their own homes and get the house ready for my husband."

O'Shea, with imperturbable countenance, pushed off his hat and scratched his head.

"I was thinking," he remarked casually, "that I'd jist send Mammy along with ye to Prince Edward." (Mammy was what he always called his wife.) "I am thinking he'll be real glad to see her, for she's a real respectable woman."

"Who?" asked Josephine, puzzled.

"Prince Edward, that owns the island," said O'Shea. "And she's that down in the mouth, it's no comfort for me to have her; and she can take the baby and welcome. It's a fair sea." He looked to the south as he spoke. "I'd risk both her and the brat on it; and Skipper Pierre is getting ready to take the boat across the ice."

Caius saw that resolution had fled from Josephine. She too looked at the calm blue southern sea, and agonized longing came into her eyes. It seemed to Caius too cruel, too horribly cruel, that she should be tortured by this temptation. Because he knew that to her it could be nothing but temptation, he sat silent when O'Shea, seeing that the lady's gaze was afar, signed to him for aid; and because he hoped that she might yield he was silent, and did not come to rescue her from the tormentor.

O'Shea gave him a look of undisguised scorn; but since he would not woo, it appeared that this man was able to do some wooing for him.

"Of course," remarked O'Shea, "I see difficulties. If the doctor here was a young man of parts, I'd easier put ye and Mammy in his care; but old Skipper Pierre is no milksop."

Josephine looked, first alert, as if suspecting an ill-bred joke, and then, as O'Shea appeared to be speaking to her quite seriously, forgetting that Caius might overhear, there came upon her face a look of gentle severity.

"That is not what I think of the doctor; I would trust him more quickly than anyone else, except you, O'Shea."

The words brought to Caius a pang, but he hardly noticed it in watching the other two, for the lady, when she had spoken, looked off again with longing at the sea, and O'Shea, whose rough heart melted under the trustful affection of the exception she made, for a moment turned away his head. Caius saw in him the man whom he had only once seen before, and that was when his child had died. It was but a few moments; the easy quizzical manner sat upon him again.