He made no attempt to refuse them, and she hurried on.
"I sent the trunks for two reasons; first, because there might be things in them you could use till you get something better; and then I wanted to prevent suspicion arising from your sailing without luggage. Every little thing of that sort counts. The trunks have "H.S." painted in white letters on them; so that you"ll have no difficulty in knowing them at sight. I"ve put a name with the same initials on the ticket. You"d better use it till you feel it safe to take your own again."
"What name?" he asked, with eager curiosity, beginning to take the ticket out of its envelope.
"Never mind now," she said, quickly. "It"s just a name--any name. You can look at it afterward. We"d better go on."
She made as though she would move, but he detained her.
"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"
"Like a good many others," she smiled.
"Then tell me what it is. Don"t let me go away without knowing it. You can"t think what it means to me."
"I should think you"d see what it means to me."
"I don"t. What harm can it do you?"
"If you don"t see, I"m afraid I can"t explain. To be nameless is--- how shall I say it?--a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking care of you, I"ve done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a way--a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand already--it"s a relief to me that you don"t know who I am. And even that isn"t everything."
"Well--what else?"
"When this little episode is over"--her voice trembled, and it was not without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again--"when this little episode is over, it will be better for us both--for you as well as for me--to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn"t past by any means; but it"s a kind of danger in which ignorance can be made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan"t know anything about you after you"ve gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."
"That"s what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you again?"
"Why should you communicate with me at all?"
"To pay you back your money, for one thing--"
"Oh, that doesn"t matter."
"Perhaps it doesn"t from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it wouldn"t be my only reason in any case."
Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt him.
"I"m afraid we haven"t time to talk about it now," she said, hurriedly.
"We really must be going on."
"I"m not going to talk about it now," he declared, rising in his turn. "I said it would be a reason for my wanting to communicate with you again. I shall want to tell you something then; though perhaps by that time you won"t want to hear it."
"Hadn"t we better wait and see?"
"That"s what I shall have to do; but how can I come back to you at all if I don"t know who you are?"
"I shall have to leave that to your ingenuity," she laughed, with an attempt to treat the matter lightly. "In the mean time we must hurry on.
It"s absolutely necessary that you should set out by sunset."
She glided into the invisible trail running down the lakeside slope of the mountain, so that he was obliged to follow her. As they had climbed up, so they descended--the girl steadily and silently in advance. The region was dotted with farms; but she kept to the shelter of the woodland, and before he expected it they found themselves at the water"s edge. A canoe drawn up in a cove gave him the first clear hint of her intentions.
It was a pretty little cove, enclosed by two tiny headlands, forming a miniature landlocked bay, hidden from view of the lake beyond. Trees leaned over it and into it, while the canoe rested on a yard-long beach of sand.
"I see," he remarked, after she had allowed him to take his own observations. "You want me to go over to Burlington and catch a train to Montreal."
She shook her head, smiling, as he thought, rather tremulously.
"I"m afraid I"ve planned a much longer journey for you. Come and see the preparations I"ve made." They stepped to the side of the canoe, so as to look down into it. "That," she pursued, pointing to a small suit-case forward of the middle thwart, "will enable you to look like an ordinary traveller after you"ve landed. And that," she added, indicating a package in the stern, "contains nothing more nor less than sandwiches. Those are bottles of mineral water. The small objects are a corkscrew, a gla.s.s, a railway timetable a cheap compa.s.s, and a cheaper watch. In addition you"ll find a map of the lake, which you can consult tomorrow morning, after you"ve paddled all night through the part with which you"re most familiar."
"Where am I going?" he asked, huskily, avoiding her eyes. The nonchalance of her tone had not deceived him, and he thought it well not to let their glances meet.
"You"ll keep to the middle of the lake and go on steadily. You"ll have all Champlain to yourself to-night, and in daylight there"s no reason why you shouldn"t pa.s.s for an ordinary sportsman. All the same, you had better rest by day, and go on again in the evening. You"ll find lots of little secluded coves where you can pull up the canoe and be quite undisturbed.
I"d do that, if I were you."
He nodded to show that he understood her.
"When you look at the map," she went on, "you"ll find that I"ve traced a route for you, after you get above Plattsville. You"ll see that it will take you past the little French-Canadian village of Deux Etoiles. You can"t mistake it, because there"s a lighthouse, with a revolving light, on a rock, just off the sh.o.r.e. You"ll be in Canada then. You"d better time yourself to go by about nightfall."
He nodded his agreement with her again, and she continued.
"About a mile above the lighthouse, and close in by the eastern sh.o.r.e, just where the lake becomes very narrow, there are two little islands lying close together. You"ll take them as a landmark, because immediately opposite them, on the mainland, there"s a stretch of forest running for a good many miles. There you can land finally. You must drag the canoe right up into the wood, and hide it as well as you can. It"s my own canoe, so that it can lie there till it drops to pieces. Is all that quite clear to you?"
Once more he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Again the sight of his emotion braced her to make her tone more matter-of-fact than ever.
"Now, then," she went on, "if you consult the map you"ll see that an old wood-road runs through the forest, and comes out at the station of Saint Jean du Clou Noir. There you can get a train to Quebec.... The road begins nearly opposite the two little islands I spoke of.... I don"t think you"ll have any difficulty in finding it.... It"s about seven miles to the station.... You could walk that easily enough through the night.... I"ve marked a very good train on the time-table--a train that stops at Saint Jean du Clou Noir at seven thirty-five ..."
A choking sensation warned her to stop, but she retained the power to smile. The sun had set, and the slow northern night was beginning to close in. Across the lake the mountains of Vermont were receding into deep purple uniformity, while over the crimson of the west a veil of filmy black was falling, as though dropped in mid-flight by the angel of the dark. Here and there through the dead-turquoise green of the sky one could detect the pale glimmer of a star.
"You must go now," she whispered. He began to move the canoe into the water.
"I haven"t thanked you," he began, unsteadily, holding the canoe by the bow, "because you wouldn"t let me. As a matter of fact, I don"t know how to do it--adequately. But if I live at all, my life will belong to you.
That"s all I can say. My life will be a thing for you to dispose of. If you ever have need of it--"
"I shan"t have," she said, hastily, "but I"ll remember what you say."
"Thanks; that"s all I ask. For the present I can only hope for the chance of making my promise good."
She said nothing in reply, and after a minute"s silence he entered the canoe. She steadied it herself to allow him to step in. It was not till he had done so and had knelt down with the paddle in his hand that, moved by a sudden impulse she leaned to him and kissed him. Then, releasing the light craft, she allowed it to glide out like a swan on the tiny bay. In three strokes of the paddle it had pa.s.sed between the low, enclosing headlands and was out of sight. When she summoned up strength to creep to an eminence commanding the lake, it was already little more than a speck, moving rapidly northward, over the opal-tinted waters.
VI
On finding himself alone, and relatively free, Ford"s first sensation was one of insecurity. Having lived for more than a year under orders and observation, he had lost for the moment some of his natural confidence in his own initiative. Though he struck resolutely up the lake he was aware of an inner bewilderment, bordering on physical discomfort, at being his own master. For the first half-hour he paddled mechanically, his consciousness benumbed by the overwhelming strangeness. As far as he was able to formulate his thought at all he felt himself to be in process of a new birth, into a new phase of existence. In the darkening of the sky above him and of the lake around there came upon him something of the mental obscurity that might mark the pa.s.sage of a transmigrating soul.
After the subdued excitement of the past weeks, and especially of the past hour, the very regularity of his movements now lulled him into a pa.s.sivity only quickened by vague fears. The noiseless leaping forward of the canoe beneath him heightened his sense of breaking with the past and hastening onward into another life. In that life he would be a new creature, free to be a law unto himself.