When Edith came up half an hour later, she found the worn-out invalid sitting up and reading a novel.
"How is your headache, dear?" she asked, carefully keeping her face turned away from Katherine.
"Oh, it"s all gone," said Miss Rangely cheerfully.
"Why didn"t you come down then? Ned was here."
"Well, Ede, I did go down, but I thought I wasn"t particularly wanted, so I came back."
Edith faced her friend in dismay, forgetful of swollen lids and tear-stained cheeks.
"Katherine!"
"Don"t look so conscience stricken, my dear child. There is no harm done."
"You heard--"
"Some surprising speeches. So you and Ned have gone and fallen in love with one another?"
"Oh, Katherine," sobbed Edith, "we--we--couldn"t help it--but it"s all over. Oh, don"t be angry with me!"
"Angry? My dear, I"m delighted."
"Delighted?"
"Yes, you dear goose. Can"t you guess, or must I tell you? Sidney and I did the very same, and had just such a melancholy parting last night as I suspect you and Ned had tonight."
"Katherine!"
"Yes, it"s quite true. And of course we made up our minds to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of duty and all that. But now, thank goodness, there is no need of such wholesale immolation. So just let"s forgive each other."
"Oh," sighed Edith happily, "it is almost too good to be true."
"It is really providentially ordered, isn"t it?" said Katherine. "Ned and I would never have got on together in the world, and you and Sidney would have bored each other to death. As it is, there will be four perfectly happy people instead of four miserable ones. I"ll tell Ned so tomorrow."
Four Winds
Alan Douglas threw down his pen with an impatient exclamation. It was high time his next Sunday"s sermon was written, but he could not concentrate his thoughts on his chosen text. For one thing he did not like it and had selected it only because Elder Trewin, in his call of the evening before, had hinted that it was time for a good stiff doctrinal discourse, such as his predecessor in Rexton, the Rev. Jabez Strong, had delighted in. Alan hated doctrines--"the soul"s staylaces," he called them--but Elder Trewin was a man to be reckoned with and Alan preached an occasional sermon to please him.
"It"s no use," he said wearily. "I could have written a sermon in keeping with that text in November or midwinter, but now, when the whole world is reawakening in a miracle of beauty and love, I can"t do it. If a northeast rainstorm doesn"t set in before next Sunday, Mr.
Trewin will not have his sermon. I shall take as my text instead, "The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds has come.""
He rose and went to his study window, outside of which a young vine was glowing in soft tender green tints, its small dainty leaves casting quivering shadows on the opposite wall where the portrait of Alan"s mother hung. She had a fine, strong, sweet face; the same face, cast in a masculine mould, was repeated in her son, and the resemblance was striking as he stood in the searching evening sunshine. The black hair grew around his forehead in the same way; his eyes were steel blue, like hers, with a similar expression, half brooding, half tender, in their depths. He had the mobile, smiling mouth of the picture, but his chin was deeper and squarer, dented with a dimple which, combined with a certain occasional whimsicality of opinion and glance, had caused Elder Trewin some qualms of doubt regarding the fitness of this young man for his high and holy vocation. The Rev. Jabez Strong had never indulged in dimples or jokes; but then, as Elder Trewin, being a just man, had to admit, the Rev. Jabez Strong had preached many a time and oft to more empty pews than full ones, while now the church was crowded to its utmost capacity on Sundays and people came to hear Mr. Douglas who had not darkened a church door for years. All things considered, Elder Trewin decided to overlook the dimple. There was sure to be some drawback in every minister.
Alan from his study looked down on all the length of the Rexton valley, at the head of which the manse was situated, and thought that Eden might have looked so in its innocence, for all the orchards were abloom and the distant hills were tremulous and aerial in springtime gauzes of pale purple and pearl. But in any garden, despite its beauty, is an element of tameness and domesticity, and Alan"s eyes, after a moment"s delighted gazing, strayed wistfully off to the north where the hills broke away into a long sloping lowland of pine and fir. Beyond it stretched the wide expanse of the lake, flashing in the molten gold and crimson of evening. Its lure was irresistible. Alan had been born and bred beside a faraway sea and the love of it was strong in his heart--so strong that he knew he must go back to it sometime. Meanwhile, the great lake, mimicking the sea in its vast expanse and the storms that often swept over it, was his comfort and solace. As often as he could he stole away to its wild and lonely sh.o.r.e, leaving the snug bounds of cultivated home lands behind him with something like a sense of relief. Down there by the lake was a primitive wilderness where man was as naught and man-made doctrines had no place. There one might walk hand in hand with nature and so come very close to G.o.d. Many of Alan"s best sermons were written after he had come home, rapt-eyed, from some long sh.o.r.e tramp where the wilderness had opened its heart to him and the pines had called to him in their soft, sibilant speech.
With a half guilty glance at the futile sermon, he took his hat and went out. The sun of the cool spring evening was swinging low over the lake as he turned into the unfrequented, deep-rutted road leading to the sh.o.r.e. It was two miles to the lake, but half way there Alan came to where another road branched off and struck down through the pines in a northeasterly direction. He had sometimes wondered where it led but he had never explored it. Now he had a sudden whim to do so and turned into it. It was even rougher and lonelier than the other; between the ruts the gra.s.ses grew long and thickly; sometimes the pine boughs met overhead; again, the trees broke away to reveal wonderful glimpses of gleaming water, purple islets, dark feathery coasts.
Still, the road seemed to lead nowhere and Alan was half repenting the impulse which had led him to choose it when he suddenly came out from the shadow of the pines and found himself gazing on a sight which amazed him.
Before him was a small peninsula running out into the lake and terminating in a long sandy point. Beyond it was a glorious sweep of sunset water. The peninsula itself seemed barren and sandy, covered for the most part with scrub firs and spruces, through which the narrow road wound on to what was the astonishing; feature in the landscape--a grey and weather-beaten house built almost at the extremity of the point and shadowed from the western light by a thick plantation of tall pines behind it.
It was the house which puzzled Alan. He had never known there was any house near the lake sh.o.r.e--had never heard mention made of any; yet here was one, and one which was evidently occupied, for a slender spiral of smoke was curling upward from it on the chilly spring air.
It could not be a fisherman"s dwelling, for it was large and built after a quaint tasteful design. The longer Alan looked at it the more his wonder grew. The people living here were in the bounds of his congregation. How then was it that he had never seen or heard of them?
He sauntered slowly down the road until he saw that it led directly to the house and ended in the yard. Then he turned off in a narrow path to the sh.o.r.e. He was not far from the house now and he scanned it observantly as he went past. The barrens swept almost up to its door in front but at the side, sheltered from the lake winds by the pines, was a garden where there was a fine show of gay tulips and golden daffodils. No living creature was visible and, in spite of the blossoming geraniums and muslin curtains at the windows and the homely spiral of smoke, the place had a lonely, almost untenanted, look.
When Alan reached the sh.o.r.e he found that it was of a much more open and less rocky nature than the part which he had been used to frequent. The beach was of sand and the scrub barrens dwindled down to it almost insensibly. To right and left fir-fringed points ran out into the lake, shaping a little cove with the house in its curve.
Alan walked slowly towards the left headland, intending to follow the sh.o.r.e around to the other road. As he pa.s.sed the point he stopped short in astonishment. The second surprise and mystery of the evening confronted him.
A little distance away a girl was standing--a girl who turned a startled face at his unexpected appearance. Alan Douglas had thought he knew all the girls in Rexton, but this lithe, glorious creature was a stranger to him. She stood with her hand on the head of a huge, tawny collie dog; another dog was sitting on his haunches beside her.
She was tall, with a great braid of shining chestnut hair, showing ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it, hanging over her shoulder. The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and strength of her supple form. Her face was oval and pale, with straight black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth--a face whose beauty bore the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled with a wild sweetness, as of a flower growing in some lonely and inaccessible place. None of the Rexton girls looked like that. Who, in the name of all that was amazing, could she be?
As the thought crossed Alan"s mind the girl turned, with an air of indifference that might have seemed slightly overdone to a calmer observer than was the young minister at that moment and, with a gesture of command to her dogs, walked quickly away into the scrub spruces. She was so tall that her uncovered head was visible over them as she followed some winding footpath, and Alan stood like a man rooted to the ground until he saw her enter the grey house. Then he went homeward in a maze, all thought of sermons, doctrinal or otherwise, for the moment knocked out of his head.
She is the most beautiful woman I ever saw, he thought. How is it possible that I have lived in Rexton for six months and never heard of her or of that house? Well, I daresay there"s some simple explanation of it all. The place may have been unoccupied until lately--probably it is the summer residence of people who have only recently come to it. I"ll ask Mrs. Danby. She"ll know if anybody will. That good woman knows everything about everybody in Rexton for three generations back.
Alan found Isabel King with his housekeeper when he got home. His greeting was tinged with a slight constraint. He was not a vain man, but he could not help knowing that Isabel looked upon him with a favour that had in it much more than professional interest. Isabel herself showed it with sufficient distinctness. Moreover, he felt a certain personal dislike of her and of her hard, insistent beauty, which seemed harder and more insistent than ever contrasted with his recollection of the girl of the lake sh.o.r.e.
Isabel had a trick of coming to the manse on plausible errands to Mrs.
Danby and lingering until it was so dark that Alan was in courtesy bound to see her home. The ruse was a little too patent and amused Alan, although he carefully hid his amus.e.m.e.nt and treated Isabel with the fine unvarying deference which his mother had engrained into him for womanhood--a deference that flattered Isabel even while it annoyed her with the sense of a barrier which she could not break down or pa.s.s. She was the daughter of the richest man in Rexton and inclined to give herself airs on that account, but Alan"s gentle indifference always brought home to her an unwelcome feeling of inferiority.
"You"ve been tiring yourself out again tramping that lake sh.o.r.e, I suppose," said Mrs. Danby, who had kept house for three bachelor ministers and consequently felt ent.i.tled to hector them in a somewhat maternal fashion.
"Not tiring myself--resting and refreshing myself rather," smiled Alan. "I was tired when I went out but now I feel like a strong man rejoicing to run a race. By the way, Mrs. Danby, who lives in that quaint old house away down at the very sh.o.r.e? I never knew of its existence before."
Alan"s "by the way" was not quite so indifferent as he tried to make it. Isabel King, leaning back posingly among the cushions of the lounge, sat quickly up as he asked his question.
"Dear me, you don"t mean to say you"ve never heard of Captain Anthony--Captain Anthony Oliver?" said Mrs. Danby. "He lives down there at Four Winds, as they call it--he and his daughter and an old cousin."
Isabel King bent forward, her brown eyes on Alan"s face.
"Did you see Lynde Oliver?" she asked with suppressed eagerness.
Alan ignored the question--perhaps he did not hear it.
"Have they lived there long?" he asked.
"For eighteen years," said Mrs. Danby placidly. "It"s funny you haven"t heard them mentioned. But people don"t talk much about the Captain now--he"s an old story--and of course they never go anywhere, not even to church. The Captain is a rank infidel and they say his daughter is just as bad. To be sure, n.o.body knows much about her, but it stands to reason that a girl who"s had her bringing up must be odd, to say no worse of her. It"s not really her fault, I suppose--her wicked old scalawag of a father is to blame for it. She"s never darkened a church or school door in her life and they say she"s always been a regular tomboy--running wild outdoors with dogs, and fishing and shooting like a man. n.o.body ever goes there--the Captain doesn"t want visitors. He must have done something dreadful in his time, if it was only known, when he"s so set on living like a hermit away down on that jumping-off place. Did you see any of them?"
"I saw Miss Oliver, I suppose," said Alan briefly. "At least I met a young lady on the sh.o.r.e. But where did these people come from? Surely more is known of them than this."
"Precious little. The truth is, Mr. Douglas, folks don"t think the Olivers respectable and don"t want to have anything to do with them.
Eighteen years ago Captain Anthony came from goodness knows where, bought the Four Winds point, and built that house. He said he"d been a sailor all his life and couldn"t live away from the water. He brought his wife and child and an old cousin of his with him. This Lynde wasn"t more than two years old then. People went to call but they never saw any of the women and the Captain let them see they weren"t wanted. Some of the men who"d been working round the place saw his wife and said she was sickly but real handsome and like a lady, but she never seemed to want to see anyone or be seen herself. There was a story that the Captain had been a smuggler and that if he was caught he"d be sent to prison. Oh, there were all sorts of yarns, mostly coming from the men who worked there, for n.o.body else ever got inside the house. Well, four years ago his wife disappeared--it wasn"t known how or when. She just wasn"t ever seen again, that"s all. Whether she died or was murdered or went away n.o.body ever knew. There was some talk of an investigation but nothing came of it. As for the girl, she"s always lived there with her father. She must be a perfect heathen. He never goes anywhere, but there used to be talk of strangers visiting him--queer sort of characters who came up the lake in vessels from the American side. I haven"t heard any reports of such these past few years, though--not since his wife disappeared. He keeps a yacht and goes sailing in it--sometimes he cruises about for weeks--that"s about all he ever does. And now you know as much about the Olivers as I do, Mr. Douglas."