“Mrs. Barrett’s little Bessie is very ill with fever,” answered Marian. Then, catching his anxious look, she hastened to add, “It is nothing infectious — some kind of a slow, sapping variety. There is no danger, Esterbrook.”
“I was not afraid for myself,” he replied quietly. “My alarm was for you. You are too precious to me, Marian, for me to permit you to risk health and life, if it were dangerous. What a Lady Bountiful you are to those people at the Cove. When we are married you must take me in hand and teach me your creed of charity. I’m afraid I’ve lived a rather selfish life. You will change all that, dear. You will make a good man of me.”
“You are that now, Esterbrook,” she said softly. “If you were not, I could not love you.”
“It is a negative sort of goodness, I fear. I have never been tried or tempted severely. Perhaps I should fail under the test.”
“I am sure you would not,” answered Marian proudly.
Esterbrook laughed; her faith in him was pleasant. He had no thought but that he would prove worthy of it.
The Cove, so-called, was a little fishing hamlet situated on the low, sandy shore of a small bay. The houses, clustered in one spot, seemed like nothing so much as larger shells washed up by the sea, so grey and bleached were they from long exposure to sea winds and spray.
Dozens of ragged children were playing about them, mingled with several disreputable yellow curs that yapped noisily at the strangers.
Down on the sandy strip of beach below the houses groups of men were lounging about. The mackerel, season had not yet set in; the spring herring netting was past. It was holiday time among the sea folks. They were enjoying it to the full, a happy, ragged colony, careless of what the morrows might bring forth.
Out beyond, the boats were at anchor, floating as gracefully on the twinkling water as sea birds, their tall masts bowing landward on the swell. A lazy, dreamful calm had fallen over the distant seas; the horizon blues were pale and dim; faint purple hazes blurred the outlines of far-off headlands and cliffs; the yellow sands sparkled in the sunshine as if powdered with jewels.
A murmurous babble of life buzzed about the hamlet, pierced through by the shrill undertones of the wrangling children, most of whom had paused in their play to scan the visitors with covert curiosity.
Marian led the way to a house apart from the others at the very edge of the shelving rock. The dooryard was scrupulously clean and unlittered; the little footpath through it was neatly bordered by white clam shells; several thrifty geraniums in bloom looked out from the muslin-curtained windows.
A weary-faced woman came forward to meet them.
“Bessie’s much the same, Miss Lesley,” she said, in answer to Marian’s inquiry. “The doctor you sent was here today and did all he could for her. He seemed quite hopeful. She don’t complain or nothing — just lies there and moans. Sometimes she gets restless. It’s very kind of you to come so often, Miss Lesley. Here, Magdalen, will you put this basket the lady’s brought up there on the shelf?”
A girl, who had been sitting unnoticed with her back to the visitors, at the head of the child’s cot in one corner of the room, stood up and slowly turned around. Marian and Esterbrook Elliott both started with involuntary surprise. Esterbrook caught his breath like a man suddenly awakened from sleep. In the name of all that was wonderful, who or what could this girl be, so little in harmony with her surroundings?
Standing in the crepuscular light of the corner, her marvellous beauty shone out with the vivid richness of some rare painting. She was tall, and the magnificent proportions of her figure were enhanced rather than marred by the severely plain dress of dark print that she wore. The heavy masses of her hair, a shining auburn dashed with golden foam, were coiled in a rich, glossy knot at the back of the classically modelled head and rippled back from a low brow whose waxen fairness even the breezes of the ocean had spared.
The girl’s face was a full, perfect oval, with features of faultless regularity, and the large, full eyes were of tawny hazel, darkened into inscrutable gloom in the dimness of the corner.
Not even Marian Lesley’s face was more delicately tinted, but not a trace of colour appeared in the smooth, marble-like cheeks; yet the waxen pallor bore no trace of disease or weakness, and the large, curving mouth was of an intense crimson.
She stood quite motionless. There was no trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness in her pose. When Mrs. Barrett said, “This is my niece, Magdalen Crawford,” she merely inclined her head in grave, silent acknowledgement. As she moved forward to take Marian’s basket, she seemed oddly out of place in the low, crowded room. Her presence seemed to throw a strange restraint over the group.
Marian rose and went over to the cot, laying her slender hand on the hot forehead of the little sufferer. The child opened its brown eyes questioningly.
“How are you today, Bessie?”
“Mad’len — I want Mad’len,” moaned the little plaintive voice.
Magdalen came over and stood beside Marian Lesley.
“She wants me,” she said in a low, thrilling voice; free from all harsh accent or intonation. “I am the only one she seems to know always. Yes, darling, Mad’len is here — right beside you. She will not leave you.”
She knelt by the little cot and passed her arm under the child’s neck, drawing the curly head close to her throat with a tender, soothing motion.
Esterbrook Elliott watched the two women intently — the one standing by the cot, arrayed in simple yet costly apparel, with her beautiful, high-bred face, and the other, kneeling on the bare, sanded floor in her print dress, with her splendid head bent low over the child and the long fringe of burnished lashes sweeping the cold pallor of the oval cheek.
From the moment that Magdalen Crawford’s haunting eyes had looked straight into his for one fleeting second, an unnamable thrill of pain and pleasure stirred his heart, a thrill so strong and sudden and passionate that his face paled with emotion; the room seemed to swim before his eyes in a mist out of which gleamed that wonderful face with its mesmeric, darkly radiant eyes, burning their way into deeps and abysses of his soul hitherto unknown to him.
When the mist cleared away and his head grew steadier, he wondered at himself. Yet he trembled in every limb and the only clear idea that struggled out of his confused thoughts was an overmastering desire to take that cold face between his hands and kiss it until its passionless marble glowed into warm and throbbing life.
“Who is that girl?” he said abruptly, when they had left the cottage. “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen — present company always excepted,” he concluded, with a depreciatory laugh.
The delicate bloom on Marian’s face deepened slightly.
“You had much better to have omitted that last sentence,” she said quietly, “it was so palpably an afterthought. Yes, she is wonderfully lovely — a strange beauty, I fancied. There seemed something odd and uncanny about it to me. She must be Mrs. Barrett’s niece. I remember that when I was down here about a month ago Mrs. Barrett told me she expected a niece of hers to live with her — for a time at least. Her parents were both dead, the father having died recently. Mrs. Barrett seemed troubled about her. She said that the girl had been well brought up and used to better things than the Cove could give her, and she feared that she would be very discontented and unhappy. I had forgotten all about it until I saw the girl today. She certainly seems to be a very superior person; she will find the Cove very lonely, I am sure. It is not probable she will stay there long. I must see what I can do for her, but her manner seemed rather repellent, don’t you think?”
“Hardly,” responded Esterbrook curtly. “She seemed surprisingly dignified and self-possessed, I fancied, for a girl in her position. A princess could not have looked and bowed more royally. There was not a shadow of embarrassment in her manner, in spite of the incongruity of her surroundings. You had much better leave her alone, Marian. In all probability she would resent any condescension on yo
ur part. What wonderful, deep, lovely eyes she has.”
Again the sensitive colour flushed Marian’s cheek as his voice lapsed unconsciously into a dreamy, retrospective tone, and a slight restraint came over her manner, which did not depart. Esterbrook went away at sunset. Marian asked him to remain for the evening, but he pleaded some excuse.
“I shall come tomorrow afternoon,” he said, as he stooped to drop a careless good-bye kiss on her face.
Marian watched him wistfully as he rode away, with an unaccountable pain in her heart. She felt more acutely than ever that there were depths in her lover’s nature that she was powerless to stir into responsive life.
Had any other that power? She thought of the girl at the Cove, with her deep eyes and wonderful face. A chill of premonitory fear seized upon her.
“I feel exactly as if Esterbrook had gone away from me forever,” she said slowly to herself, stooping to brush her cheek against a dew-cold, milk-white acacia bloom, “and would never come back to me again. If that could happen, I wonder what there would be left to live for?”
Esterbrook Elliott meant, or honestly thought he meant, to go home when he left Marian. Nevertheless, when he reached the road branching off to the Cove he turned his horse down it with a flush on his dark cheek. He realized that the motive of the action was disloyal to Marian and he felt ashamed of his weakness.
But the desire to see Magdalen Crawford once more and to look into the depths of her eyes was stronger than all else, and overpowered every throb of duty and resistance.
He saw nothing of her when he reached the Cove. He could think of no excuse for calling at the Barrett cottage, so he rode slowly past the hamlet and along the shore.
The sun, red as a smouldering ember, was half buried in the silken violet rim of the sea; the west was a vast lake of saffron and rose and ethereal green, through which floated the curved shallop of a thin new moon, slowly deepening from lustreless white, through gleaming silver, into burnished gold, and attended by one solitary, pearl-white star. The vast concave of sky above was of violet, infinite and flawless. Far out dusky amethystine islets clustered like gems on the shining breast of the bay. The little pools of water along the low shores glowed like mirrors of polished jacinth. The small, pine-fringed headlands ran out into the water, cutting its lustrous blue expanse like purple wedges.
As Esterbrook turned one of them he saw Magdalen standing out on the point of the next, a short distance away. Her back was towards him, and her splendid figure was outlined darkly against the vivid sky.
Esterbrook sprang from his horse and left the animal standing by itself while he walked swiftly out to her. His heart throbbed suffocatingly. He was conscious of no direct purpose save merely to see her.
She turned when he reached her with a slight start of surprise. His footsteps had made no sound on the tide-rippled sand.
For a few moments they faced each other so, eyes burning into eyes with mute soul-probing and questioning. The sun had disappeared, leaving a stain of fiery red to mark his grave; the weird, radiant light was startlingly vivid and clear. Little crisp puffs and flakes of foam scurried over the point like elfin things. The fresh wind, blowing up the bay, tossed the lustrous rings of hair about Magdalen’s pale face; all the routed shadows of the hour had found refuge in her eyes.
Not a trace of colour appeared in her face under Esterbrook Elliott’s burning gaze. But when he said “Magdalen!” a single, hot scorch of crimson flamed up into her cheeks protestingly. She lifted her hand with a splendid gesture, but no word passed her lips.
“Magdalen, have you nothing to say to me?” he asked, coming closer to her with an imploring passion in his face never seen by Marian Lesley’s eyes. He reached out his hand, but she stepped back from his touch.
“What should I have to say to you?”
“Say that you are glad to see me.”
“I am not glad to see you. You have no right to come here. But I knew you would come.”
“You knew it? How?”
“Your eyes told me so today. I am not blind — I can see further than those dull fisher folks. Yes, I knew you would come. That is why I came here tonight — so that you would find me alone and I could tell you that you were not to come again.”
“Why must you tell me that, Magdalen?”
“Because, as I have told you, you have no right to come.”
“But if I will not obey you? If I will come in defiance of your prohibition?”
She turned her steady luminous eyes on his pale, set face.
“You would stamp yourself as a madman, then,” she said coldly. “I know that you are Miss Lesley’s promised husband. Therefore, you are either false to her or insulting to me. In either case the companionship of Magdalen Crawford is not what you must seek. Go!”
She turned away from him with an imperious gesture of dismissal. Esterbrook Elliott stepped forward and caught one firm, white wrist.
“I shall not obey you,” he said in a low, intense tone; his fine eyes burned into hers. “You may send me away, but I will come back, again and yet again until you have learned to welcome me. Why should you meet me like an enemy? Why can we not be friends?”
The girl faced him once more.
“Because,” she said proudly, “I am not your equal. There can be no friendship between us. There ought not to be. Magdalen Crawford, the fisherman’s niece, is no companion for you. You will be foolish, as well as disloyal, if you ever try to see me again. Go back to the beautiful, high-bred woman you love and forget me. Perhaps you think I am talking strangely. Perhaps you think me bold and unwomanly to speak so plainly to you, a stranger. But there are some circumstances in life when plain-speaking is best. I do not want to see you again. Now, go back to your own world.”
Esterbrook Elliott slowly turned from her and walked in silence back to the shore. In the shadows of the point he stopped to look back at her, standing out like some inspired prophetess against the fiery background of the sunset sky and silver-blue water. The sky overhead was thick-sown with stars; the night breeze was blowing up from its lair in distant, echoing sea caves. On his right the lights of the Cove twinkled out through the dusk.
“I feel like a coward and a traitor,” he said slowly. “Good God, what is this madness that has come over me? Is this my boasted strength of manhood?”
A moment later the hoof beats of his horse died away up the shore.
Magdalen Crawford lingered on the point until the last dull red faded out into the violet gloom of the June sea dusk, than which nothing can be rarer or diviner, and listened to the moan and murmur of the sea far out over the bay with sorrowful eyes and sternly set lips.
The next day, when the afternoon sun hung hot and heavy over the water, Esterbrook Elliott came again to the Cove. He found it deserted. A rumour of mackerel had come, and every boat had sailed out in the rose-red dawn to the fishing grounds. But down on a strip of sparkling yellow sand he saw Magdalen Crawford standing, her hand on the rope that fastened a small white dory to the fragment of a half-embedded wreck.
She was watching a huddle of gulls clustered on the tip of a narrow, sandy spit running out to the left. She turned at the sound of his hurried foot-fall behind her. Her face paled slightly, and into the depths of her eyes leapt a passionate, mesmeric glow that faded as quickly as it came.
“You see I have come back in spite of your command, Magdalen.”
“I do see it,” she answered in a gravely troubled voice. “You are a madman who refuses to be warned.”
“Where are you going, Magdalen?” She had loosened the rope from the wreck.
“I am going to row over to Chapel Point for salt. They think the boats will come in tonight loaded with mackerel — look at them away out there by the score — and salt will be needed.”
“Can you row so far alone?”
“Easily. I learned to row long ago — for a pastime then. Since coming here I find it of great service to me.”
She stepped lightly
into the tiny shallop and picked up an oar. The brilliant sunshine streamed about her, burnishing the rich tints of her hair into ruddy gold. She balanced herself to the swaying of the dory with the grace of a sea bird. The man looking at her felt his brain reel.
“Good-bye, Mr. Elliott.”
For answer he sprang into the dory and, snatching an oar, pushed against the old wreck with such energy that the dory shot out from the shore like a foam bell. His sudden spring had set it rocking violently. Magdalen almost lost her footing and caught blindly at his arm. As her fingers closed on his wrist a thrill as of fire shot through his every vein.
“Why have you done this, Mr. Elliott? You must go back.”
“But I will not,” he said masterfully, looking straight into her eyes with an imperiousness that sat well upon him. “I am going to row you over to Chapel Point. I have the oars — I will be master this once, at least.”
For an instant her eyes flashed defiant protest, then drooped before his. A sudden, hot blush crimsoned her pale face. His will had mastered hers; the girl trembled from head to foot, and the proud, sensitive, mouth quivered.
Into the face of the man watching her breathlessly flashed a triumphant, passionate joy. He put out his hand and gently pushed her down into the seat. Sitting opposite, he took up the oars and pulled out over the sheet of sparkling blue water, through which at first the bottom of white sand glimmered wavily but afterwards deepened to translucent, dim depths of greenness.
His heart throbbed tumultuously. Once the thought of Marian drifted across his mind like a chill breath of wind, but it was forgotten when his eyes met Magdalen’s.
“Tell me about yourself, Magdalen,” he said at last, breaking the tremulous, charmed, sparkling silence.
“There is nothing to tell,” she answered with characteristic straightforwardness. “My life has been a very uneventful one. I have never been rich, or very well educated, but — it used to be different from now. I had some chance before — before Father died.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 605