Chapter IV: Part 4

“You will give yourself to me now?” he winningly begged, venturing out-stretched hands. “You have felt the need as I have? Do you think the days have been easy to me? When you were on your knees I was on my knees too. Every day you came in this direction I came as far as I dared, to meet you. Are the obstacles all passed?”

“No,” said Emeline.

He was making her ask herself that most insidious question, “Why could not the other have been like this?”

“Tell me—can you say, 'I hate you,' now?”

“No,” said Emeline.

“I have grown to be a better man since you said you hated me. The miracle cannot be forced. Next time?” He spoke wistfully.

“No,” Emeline answered, holding to the bush. She kept her eyes on the ground while he talked, and glanced up when she replied. He stood with his hat off. The flakes of sun touched his head and the fair skin of his forehead.

He moved towards Emeline, and she retreated around the bush. Without hesitating he passed, making a salutation, and went on by himself to St. James. She watched his rapid military walk furtively, her eyebrows crouching, her lips rippling with passionate tremors. Then she took to flight homeward, her skirts swishing through the woods with a rush like the wind. The rebound was as violent as the tension had been.

There were few festivities on Beaver Island, the Mormon families living a pastoral life, many of them yet taxed by the struggle for existence. Crops shot up rank and strong in the short Northern summer. Soft cloud masses sailed over the island, and rain-storms marched across it with drums of thunder which sent reverberations along the water world. Or fogs rolled in, muffling and obliterating homesteads.

Emeline stayed in the house, busying herself with the monotonous duties of the family three days. She was determined never to go into the woods path again without Roxy. The fourth day a gray fog gave her no choice but imprisonment. It had the acrid tang of smoke from fires burning on the mainland. About nightfall the west wind rose and blew it back, revealing a land mantled with condensed drops.

Emeline put on her hat and shawl to walk around in the twilight. The other young creatures of the house were glad to be out also, and Roxy and Roxy's lover talked across the fence. Emeline felt fortified against the path through the woods at night; yet her feet turned in that direction, and as certainly as water seeks its level she found herself on the moist elastic track. Cow-bells on the farm sounded fainter and farther. A gloom of trees massed around her, and the forest gave up all its perfume to the dampness.

At every step she meant to turn back, though a recklessness of night and of meeting the King of Beaver grew upon her. Thus, without any reasonable excuse for her presence there, she met Mary French.

“Is that you, Miss Cheeseman?” panted the Prophet's youngest wife.

Emeline confessed her identity.

“I was coming for you, but it is fortunate you are so far on the way. There is a steamboat at the dock, and it will go out in half an hour. I could not get away sooner to tell you.” Mary French breathed heavily from running. “When the steamboat came in the captain sent for my husband, as the captains always do. I went with him: he knows how I dread to have him go alone upon a boat since an attempt was made last year to kidnap him. But this time there was another reason, for I have been watching. And sure enough, a young man was on the steamboat inquiring where he could find you. His name is James Arnold. The captain asked my husband to direct him to you. You will readily understand why he did not find you. Come at once!”

“I will not,” said Emeline.

“But you wanted me to help you, and I have been trying to do it. We easily learned by letter from our friends in Detroit who your lover was. My husband had me do that: he wanted to know. Then without his knowledge I stooped to write an anonymous letter.”

“To James Arnold?”

“Yes.”

“About me?”

“About you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you were exposed to great danger on Beaver Island, among the Mormons, and if you had any interested friend it was time for him to interfere.”

“And that brought him here?”

“I am sure it did. He was keenly disappointed at not finding you.”

“But why didn't he come to the farm?”

“My husband prevented that. He said you were on Beaver Island three or four weeks ago, but you were now in the Fairy Isle. It was no lie. He spoke in parables, but the other heard him literally. We let him inquire of people in St. James. But no one had seen you since the Saturday you came to the Tabernacle. So he is going back to Mackinac to seek you. Your life will be decided in a quarter of an hour. Will you go on that steamboat?”

“Throw myself on the mercy of a man who dared—_dared_ to break his engagement, and who ought to be punished and put on probation, and then refused! No, I cannot!”

“The minutes are slipping away.”

“Besides, I have nothing with me but the clothes I have on. And my uncle's family—think of my uncle's family!”

“You can write to your uncle and have him send your baggage. I dare not carry any messages. But I thought of what you would need to-night, and put some things and some money in this satchel. They were mine. Keep them all.”

Emeline took hold of the bag which Mary French shoved in her hand. Their faces were indistinct to each other.

“For the first time in my life I have deceived my husband!”

“Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do?” cried the girl.

A steamer whistle at St. James dock sent its bellow rebounding from tree to tree in the woods. Emeline seized Mary French and kissed her violently on both cheeks. She snatched the bag and flew towards St. James.

“Stop!” commanded the Prophet's wife.

She ran in pursuit, catching Emeline by the shoulders.

“You sha'n't go! What am I doing? Maybe robbing him of what is necessary to his highest success! I am a fool—to think he might turn back to me for consolation when you are gone—God forgive me such silly fondness! I can't have a secret between him and myself—I will tell him! You shall not go—and cause him a mortal hurt! Wait!—stop!—the boat is gone! It's too late!”

“Let me loose!” struggled Emeline, wrenching herself away.

She ran on through the woods, and Mary French, snatching at garments which eluded her, stumbled and fell on the damp path, gathering dead leaves under her palms. The steamer's prolonged bellow covered her voice.

Candles were lighted in St. James. The Tabernacle spread itself like a great circular web dark with moisture. Emeline was conscious of running across the gang-plank as a sailor stooped to draw it in. The bell was ringing and the boat was already in motion. It sidled and backed away from its moorings.

Emeline knelt panting at the rail on the forward deck. A flambeau fastened to the wharf bowed its light to the wind as the boat swung about, showing the King of Beaver smiling and waving his hand in farewell. He did not see Emeline. His farewell was for the man whom he had sent away without her. His golden hair and beard and blue eyes floated into Emeline's past as the steamer receded, the powerful face and lithe figure first losing their identity, and then merging into night. What if it was true that she was robbing both him and herself of the best life, as Mary French was smitten to believe at the last moment? Her Gentile gorge rose against him, and the traditions of a thousand years warred in her with nature; yet she stretched her hands towards him in the darkness.

Then she heard a familiar voice, and knew that the old order of things was returning, while Beaver Island, like a dream, went silently down upon the waters.

Some years later, in the '50's, Emeline, sitting opposite her husband at the breakfast-table, heard him announce from the morning paper:

“Murder of King Strang, the Mormon Prophet of Beaver Island.” All the details of the affair, even the track of the bullets which crashed into that golden head, were mercilessly printed. The reader, surprised by a sob, dropped his paper.

“What! Are you crying, Mrs. Arnold?”

“It was so cruel!” sobbed Emeline. “And Billy Wentworth, like a savage, helped to do it!”

“He had provocation, no doubt, though it is a horrid deed. Perhaps I owe the King of Beaver the tribute of a tear. He befogged me considerably the only time I ever met him.”

“You see only his evil. But I see what he was to Mary French and the others.”

“His bereaved widows?”

“The ones who believed in his best.”

BEAVER LIGHTS

A magnificent fountain of flame, visible far out on the starlit lake, spurted from the north end of Beaver Island. It was the temple, in which the Mormon people had worshipped for the last time, sending sparks and illumined vapor to the zenith. The village of St. James was partly in ashes, and a blue pallor of smoke hung dimly over nearly every hill and hollow, for Gentile fishermen crazed with drink and power and long arrears of grievances had carried torch and axe from farm to farm. Until noon of that day all householding families had been driven to huddle with their cattle around the harbor dock and forced to make pens for the cattle of lumber which had been piled there for transportation. Unresisting as sheep they let themselves be shipped on four small armed steamers sent by their enemies to carry them into exile. Not one of the twelve elders who had received the last instructions of their murdered king rose up to organize any defence. Scarcely a month had passed since his wounding unto death, and his withdrawal, like Arthur, in the arms of weeping women to that spot in Wisconsin where he had found his sacred Voree plates or tables of the law. Scarcely two weeks had passed since news came back of his burial there. And already the Mormon settlement was swept off Beaver Island.

Used to border warfare and to following their dominating prophet to victory, they yet seemed unable to strike a blow without him. Such non-resistance procured them nothing but contempt. They even submitted to being compelled to destroy a cairn raised over the grave of one considered a malefactor, carrying the heap stone by stone to throw into the lake, Gentiles standing over them like Egyptian masters.

Little waves ran in rows of light, washing against the point on the north side of the landlocked harbor. A primrose star was there struggling aloft at the top of a rough rock tower. It was the fish-oil flame of Beaver lamp, and the keeper sat on his door-sill at the bottom of the light-house with his wife beside him.

The lowing of cattle missing their usual evening tendance came across from the dock, a mournful accompaniment to the distant roaring of fire and falling of timbers.

“Do you realize, Ludlow,” the young woman inquired, slipping her hand into her husband's, “that I am now the only Mormon on Beaver Island?”

“You never were a very good Mormon, Cecilia. You didn't like the breed any better than I did, though there were good people among them.”

“Will they lose all their cattle, Ludlow?”

“The cattle are safe enough,” he laughed. “The men that are doing this transporting will take the cattle. None of our Mormon friends will ever see a hoof from Beaver Island again.”

“But it seems robbery to drive them off and seize their property.”

“That's the way King Strang took Beaver from the Gentiles in the first place. Mormons and Gentiles can't live together.”

“We can.”

“I told you that you were a poor Mormon, Cecilia. And from first to last I opposed my family's entering the community. Tithes and meddling sent my father out of it a poor man. But I'm glad he went before this; and your people, too.”

She drew a deep breath. “Oh yes! They're safe in Green Bay. I couldn't endure to have them on those steamers going down the lake to-night. What will become of the community, Ludlow?”

“God knows. They'll be landed at Chicago and turned adrift on the world. I'm glad they're away from here. I've no cause to love them, but I was afraid they would be butchered like sheep. Your father and my father, if they had still been elders on the island, wouldn't have submitted, as these folks did, to abuse and exile and the loss of everything they had in the world. I can't understand it of some of them. There was Jim Baker, for instance; I'd have sworn he would fight.”

“I can understand why he didn't. He hasn't taken any interest since his second marriage.”

“Now, that was a nice piece of work! I always liked Jim the best of any of the young men until he did that. And what inducement was there in the woman?”

The light-house keeper's wife fired up. “What inducement there was for him ever to marry Rosanne I couldn't see. And I know Elizabeth Aiken loved him when we were girls together.”

“And didn't Rosanne?”

“Oh—Rosanne! A roly-poly spoiled young one, that never will be a woman! Elizabeth is noble.”

“You're fond of Elizabeth because she was witness to our secret marriage when King Strang wouldn't let me have you. I liked Jim for the same reason. Do you mind how we four slipped one at a time up the back stairs in my father's house that night, while the young folks were dancing below?”

“I mind we picked Elizabeth because Rosanne would be sure to blab, even if she had to suffer herself for it. How scared the poor elder was!”

“We did him a good turn when we got him to marry us. He'd be on one of the steamers bound for nowhere, to-night, instead of snug at Green Bay, if we hadn't started him on the road to what King Strang called disaffection.”

The light-house keeper jumped up and ran out on the point, his wife following him in nervous dread.

“What is the matter, Ludlow?”

Their feet crunched gravel and paused where ripples still ran in, endlessly bringing lines of dimmer and dimmer light. A rocking boat was tied to a stake. Anchored and bare-masted, farther out in the mouth of the bay, a fishing-smack tilted slightly in rhythmic motion. While they stood a touch of crimson replaced the sky light in the water, and great blots like blood soaking into the bay were reflected from the fire. The burning temple now seemed to rise a lofty tower of flame against the horizon. Figures could be seen passing back and forth in front of it, and shouts of fishermen came down the peninsula. The King's printing-office where the _Northern Islander_ was once issued as a daily had smouldered down out of the way. It was the first place to which they had set torch.

“I thought I heard some one running up the sail on our sail-boat,” said the light-house keeper. “No telling what these fellows may do. If they go to meddling with me in my little Government office, they'll find me as stubborn as the Mormons did.”

“Oh, Ludlow, look at the tabernacle, like a big red-hot cheese-box on the high ground! Think of the coronation there on the first King's Day!”

The light-house keeper's wife was again in imagination a long-limbed girl of fifteen, crowding into the temple to witness such a ceremony as was celebrated on no other spot of the New World. The King of Beaver, in a crimson robe, walked the temple aisle, followed by his council, his twelve elders, and seventy ministers of the minor order. In the presence of a hushed multitude he was anointed, and a crown with a cluster of projecting stars was set on his golden head. Hails and shouts, music of marching singers and the strewing of flowers went before him into the leafy July woods. Thus King's Day was established and annually observed on the 8th of July. It began with burnt-offerings. The head of each family was required to bring a chicken. A heifer was killed and carefully cut up without breaking a bone; and, while the smoke of sacrifice arose, feasting and dancing began, and lasted until sunset. Firstlings of flocks and the first-fruits of orchard and field were ordained the King's; and he also claimed one-tenth of each man's possessions. The Mosaic law was set up in Beaver Island, even to the stoning of rebellious children.

The smoke of a sacrificed people was now reeking on Beaver. This singular man's French ancestry—for he was descended from Henri de L'Estrange, who came to the New World with the Duke of York—doubtless gave him the passion for picturesqueness and the spiritual grasp on his isolated kingdom which keeps him still a notable and unforgotten figure.

“It makes me feel bad to see so much destruction,” the young man said to his wife; “though I offered to go with Billy Wentworth to shoot Strang if nobody else was willing. I knew I was marked, and sooner or later I would disappear if he continued to govern this island. But with all his faults he was a man. He could fight; and whip. He'd have sunk every steamer in the harbor to-day.”

“It's heavy on my heart, Ludlow—it's dreadful! Neighbors and friends that we shall never see again!”

The young man caught his wife by the arm. They both heard the swift beat of footsteps flying down the peninsula. Cecilia drew in her breath and crowded against her husband. A figure came into view and identified itself, leaping in bisected draperies across an open space to the light-house door.

“Why, Rosanne!” exclaimed the keeper's wife. She continued to say “Why, Rosanne! Why, Rosanne Baker!” after she had herself run into the house and lighted a candle.

She set the candle on the chimney. It showed her rock-built domicile, plain but dignified, like the hollow of a cavern, with blue china on the cupboard shelves and a spinning-wheel standing by the north wall. A corner staircase led to the second story of the tower, and on its lowest step the fugitive dropped down, weeping and panting. She was peculiarly dressed in the calico bloomers which the King of Beaver had latterly decreed for the women of his kingdom. Her trim legs and little feet, cased in strong shoes, appeared below the baggy trousers. The upper part of her person, her almond eyes, round curves and features were full of Oriental suggestions. Some sweet inmate of a harem might so have materialized, bruising her softness against the hard stair.

“Why, Rosanne Baker!” her hostess reiterated. Cecilia did not wear bloomers. She stood erect in petticoats. “I thought you went on one of the boats!”

“I didn't,” sobbed Rosanne. “When they were crowding us on I slipped among the lumber piles and hid. I've been hid all day, lying flat between boards—on top where they couldn't see me.”

“Suppose the lumber had been set on fire, too! And you haven't had anything to eat?”

“I don't want to eat. I'm only frightened to death at the wicked Gentiles burning the island. I couldn't stay there all night, so I got down and ran to your house.”

“Of course, you poor child! But, Rosanne, where's your husband?”

The trembling creature stiffened herself and looked at Cecilia out of the corners of her long eyes. “He's with Elizabeth Aiken.”

The only wife of one husband did not know how to take hold of this subject.

“But your father was there,” she suggested. “How could you leave your father and run the risk of never seeing him again?”

“I don't care if I never see him again. He said he was so discouraged he didn't care what became of any of us.”

Cecilia was going to plead the cause of domestic affection further, but she saw that four step-mothers could easily be given up. She turned helplessly to her husband who stood in the door.

“Poor thing! Ludlow, what in the world shall we do?”

“Put her to bed.”

“Of course, Ludlow. But will anybody hurt you to-morrow?”

“There are two good guns on the rack over the chimney. I don't think anybody will hurt me or her either, to-morrow.”

“Rosanne, my dear,” said Cecilia, trying to lift the relaxed soft body and to open the stairway door behind her. “Come up with me right off. I think you better be where people cannot look in at us.”

Rosanne yielded and stumbled to her feet, clinging to her friend. When they disappeared the young man heard her through the stairway enclosure sobbing with convulsive gasps:

“I hate Elizabeth Aiken! I wish they would kill Elizabeth Aiken! I hate her—I hate her!”

The light-house-keeper sat down again on his doorstep and faced the prospect of taking care of a homeless Mormon. It appeared to him that his wife had not warmly enough welcomed her or met the situation with that recklessness one needed on Beaver Island. The tabernacle began to burn lower, brands streaming away in the current which a fire makes. It was strange to be more conscious of inland doings than of that vast unsalted sea so near him, which moistened his hair with vaporous drifts through the darkness. The garnet redness of the temple shed a huger amphitheatre of shine around itself. A taste of acrid smoke was on his lips. He was considering that drunken fishermen might presently begin to rove, and he would be wiser to go in and shut the house and put out his candle, when by stealthy approaches around the light-house two persons stood before him.

“Is Ludlow here?” inquired a voice which he knew.

“I'm here, Jim! Are all the Mormons coming back?”

“Is Rosanne in your house?”

“Rosanne is here; up-stairs with Cecilia. Come inside, Jim. Have you Elizabeth with you?”

“Yes, I have Elizabeth with me.”

The three entered together. Ludlow shut the door and dropped an iron bar across it. The young men standing opposite were of nearly the same age; but one was fearless and free and the other harassed and haggard. Out-door labor and the skill of the fisheries had given to both depth of chest and clean, muscular limbs. But James Baker had the desperate and hunted look of a fugitive from justice. He was fair, of the strong-featured, blue-eyed type that has pale chestnut-colored hair clinging close to a well-domed head.

“Yes, Rosanne is here,” Ludlow repeated. “Now will you tell me how you got here?”

“I rowed back in a boat.”

“Who let you have a boat?”

“There were sailors on the steamer. After I found Rosanne was left behind I would have had a boat or killed the man that prevented me. I had to wait out on the lake until it got dark. I knew your wife would take care of her. I told myself that when I couldn't find any chance to land in St. James's Bay until sunset.”

“She's been hiding in the lumber on the dock all day.”

“Did any one hurt her?”

“Evidently not.”

The Mormon husband's face cleared with a convulsion which in woman would have been a relieving burst of tears.

“Sit down, Elizabeth,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “You look fit to fall.”

“Yes, sit down, Elizabeth,” James Baker repeated, turning to her with secondary interest. But she remained standing, a tall Greek figure in bloomers, so sure of pose that drapery or its lack was an accident of which the eye took no account. She had pushed her soft brown hair, dampened by the lake, behind her ears. They showed delicately against the two shining masses. Her forehead and chin were of noble and courageous shape. If there was fault, it was in the breadth and height of brows masterful rather than feminine. She had not one delicious sensuous charm to lure man. Her large eyes were blotted with a hopeless blankness. She waited to see what would be done next.

“Now I'll tell you,” said Baker to his friend, with decision, “I'm not going to bring the howling Gentiles around you.”

“I don't care whether they come or not.”

“I know you don't. It isn't necessary in such a time as this for you and me to look back.”

“I told you at the time I wouldn't forget it, Jim. You stood by me when I married Cecilia in the teeth of the Mormons, and I'll stand by you through any mob of Gentiles. My sail-boat's out yonder, and it's yours as long as you want it; and we'll provision it.”

“That's what I was going to ask, Ludlow.”

“If I were you I'd put for Green Bay. Old neighbors are there, my father among them.”

“That was my plan!”

“But,” Ludlow added, turning his thumb over his shoulder with embarrassment, “they're all Gentiles in Green Bay.”

“Elizabeth and I talked it over in the boat. I told her the truth before God. We've agreed to live apart. Ludlow, I never wanted any wife but Rosanne, and I don't want any wife but Rosanne now. You don't know how it happened; I was first of the young men called on to set an example. Brother Strang could bring a pressure to bear that it was impossible to resist. He might have threatened till doomsday. But I don't know what he did with me. I told him it wasn't treating Elizabeth fair. Still, I married her according to Saints' law, and I consider myself bound by my pledge to provide for her. She's a good girl. She has no one to look to but me. And I'm not going to turn her off to shift for herself if the whole United States musters against me.”

“Now you talk like a man. I think better of you than I have for a couple of weeks past.”

“It ought to make me mad to be run off of Beaver. But I couldn't take any interest. May I see Rosanne?”

“Go right up-stairs. Cecilia took her up to put her to bed. The walls and floors are thick here or she would have heard your voice.”

“Poor little Rosanne! It's been a hard day for her.”

The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as you can give me a few things to make the women comfortable for the run to Green Bay, I'll take them and put out.”

“Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what they need.”

Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most tenderly the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted on a braided rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet and remarked:

“It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have fair weather.”

“I think we are,” she answered.

Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of the windows.

At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.

Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his weapons.

“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said to the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They'll kill you, and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer. I'm going to open this window.”

A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a way through the window.

“Get off of the flower-bed,” said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his gun on the sill. “You're tramping down my wife's flowers.”

“It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We seen them shlipping in here!”

“It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own dacent wife that hard to come at, by raison of King Strang!”

“Augh! thim bloomers!—they do be makin' me sthummick sick!”

“What hurts you worst,” said Ludlow, “is the price you had to pay the Mormons for fish barrels.”

The mob groaned and hooted. “Wull ye give us oat the divil forninst there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?”

“I haven't any devil in the house.”

“It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women.”

“Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the women.”

“He'll not lave it alive.”

“You, Pat Corrigan,” said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the torch-bearer, “do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in to the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?”

“Do I moind it? I do!”

“Did I let the Mormons take you then?”

“No, bedad.”

“When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to arrest you, didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?”

“You did, bedad!”

“I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to you. They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver.”

“But the two wives of him,” argued Pat Corrigan.

“How many wives and children have you?”

“Is it 'how many wives,' says the haythen! Wan wife, by the powers; and tin childer.”

“Haven't you about as large a family as you can take care of?”

“Begobs, I have.”

“Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for her? Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it yourself.”

“No, bedad!”

“Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him alone. I don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?”

The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil for good.

“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to his confederates.

“There's no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You're not making a war on women.”

“We're not. Thrue for you.”

“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you get more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You've done about all you can on Mount Pisgah.”

As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.

“I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes on Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the sand-hills. We'd better load the boat right off, Jim.”

In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth waiting at the foot. They could see each other only by starlight. They were alone, for the others had gone out to the boat.

“Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?” spoke Elizabeth. Her sweet voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. “James says he'll build me a little house in your yard.”

“Oh, Elizabeth!”

Rosanne did not cry, “I cannot hate you!” but she threw herself into the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no longer as a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth kissed her husband's wife as a little sister.

The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind Elizabeth like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after the others to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the indignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal rights were not even recognized by the society into which she would be forced. The world was not open to her as to a man. In that day it would have stoned her if she ventured too far from some protected fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who could tramp winter snows and were not despised for their brief marriages may have flashed through Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man lighted around his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in all the swarming centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature with such genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown away?

Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal she walked in the footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.

“Take care, Rosanne. Don't stumble, darling!” said the man to whom Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a higher law unhusbanded her.

Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal without touching him as he lurched over a rock.

He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind formality to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.

“Well, bon voyage,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Mind you run up the lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don't think there'll be any chase. The Irish have freed their minds.”

“I'll send your fishing-boat back as soon as I can, Ludlow.”

“Turn it over to father; he'll see to it. Give him news of us and our love to all the folks. He will be anxious to know the truth about Beaver.”

“Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne!”

“Good-bye, Cecilia!”

A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of adjusted oars and the rush of water on each side of a boat's course, marked the fugitives' progress towards the anchored smack.

Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and watching the smoke of her past go up from a looted island, Elizabeth had the sense of a great company around her. The uninstructed girl from the little kingdom of Beaver divined a worldful of souls waiting and loving in hopeless silence and marching resistlessly as the stars to their reward. For there is a development like the unfolding of a god for those who suffer in strength and overcome.

A BRITISH ISLANDER[2]

Well, I wish you could have been here in Mrs. Gunning's day. She was theoddest woman on Mackinac. Not that she exerted herself to attract attention. But she was such a character, and her manners were so astonishing, that she furnished perennial entertainment to the few families of us constituting island society.

[Footnote 2: This story is set down exactly as it was told by the Island Chronicler.]

She was an English woman, born in South Africa, and married to an American army surgeon, and had lived over a large part of the world before coming to this fort. She had no children. But her sister had married Dr. Gunning's brother. And the good-for-nothing pair set out to follow the English drum-beat around the world, and left a child for the two more responsible ones to rear. Juliana Gunning was so deaf she could not hear thunder. But she was quits with nature, for all that; a wonderfully alluring kind of girl, with big brown eyes that were better than ears, and that could catch the meaning of moving lips. It seemed to strangers that she merely evaded conversation; for she had a sweet voice, a little drawling, and was witty when she wanted to speak. Juliana couldn't step out of the surgeon's quarters to walk across the parade-ground without making every soldier in the fort conscious of her. She was well-shaped and tall, and a slight pitting of the skin only enhanced the charm of her large features. She used to dress unlike anybody else, in foreign things that her aunt gave her, and was always carrying different kinds of thin scarfs to throw over her face and tantalize the men.

Everybody knew that Captain Markley would marry her if he could. But along comes Dr. McCurdy, a wealthy widower from the East, and nothing will do but he must hang about Mackinac week after week, pretending to need the climate—and he weighing nearly two hundred—to court Juliana Gunning. The lieutenant's wife said of Juliana that she would flirt with a half-breed if nothing better offered. But the lieutenant's wife was a homely, jealous little thing, and could never have had all the men hanging after her. And if she had had the chance she might have been as aggravating about making up her mind between two as Juliana was.

We used to think the girl very good-natured. But those three people made a queer family. Dr. Gunning was the remnant of a magnificent man, and he always had a courtly air. He paid little attention to the small affairs of life, and rated money as nothing. Dr. Gunning had his peculiarities; but I am not telling you about him. He was a kind man, and would cross the strait in any weather to attend a sick half-breed or any other ailing creature, who probably never paid him a cent. He was fond of the island, and quite satisfied to spend his life here.

The day I am telling you about, Mrs. Gunning had driven with me into the village to make some calls. She was very punctilious about calling upon strangers. If she intended to recognize a newcomer she called at once. We drove around to the rear of the fort and entered at the back sally-port, where carriages always enter; but instead of letting me put her down at the surgeon's quarters, she ordered the driver to stop in the middle of the parade-ground. Then she got out and, with never a word, marched down the steps to Captain Markley, where he was leaning against the front sally-port, looking below into the town. I didn't know what to do, so I sat and waited. It was the loveliest autumn morning you ever saw. I remember the beeches and oaks and maples were spread out like banners to the very height of the island, all crimson and yellow splashes in the midst of evergreens. There had been an awful storm the night before, and you could see down the sally-port how drenched the fort garden was at the foot of the hill.

Captain Markley had a fearfully depressed look. He was so down in the mouth that the sentinels noticed it. I saw the one in front of the western block-house stick his tongue in his cheek and wink at one pacing below. We heard afterwards that Captain Markley had been out alone to inspect target-ranges in the pine woods, and almost ran against Juliana Gunning and Dr. McCurdy sitting on a log. Before he could get out of the way he overheard the loudest proposal ever made on Mackinac. It used to be told about in mess, though how it got out Captain Markley said he did not know, unless they heard it at the fort.

“I have brought you out here,” the doctor shouted to Juliana, as loud as a cow lowing, “to tell you that I love you! I want you to be my wife!”

She behaved as if she didn't hear—I think that minx often had fun with her deafness—and inclined her head to one side.

So he said it all over again.

“I have brought you to this secluded spot to tell you that I love you! I want you to be my wife!”

It was like a steamer bellowing on the strait. Then Juliana threw her scarf over her face, and Captain Markley broke away through the bushes.

Mrs. Gunning never said a word to me about either of the suitors. It wasn't because she didn't talk, for she was a great talker. We had to postpone a card-party one evening, on account of the continuous flow of Mrs. Gunning's conversation, which never ceased until it was time for refreshments, there being not a moment's pause for the tables to be set out.

I was startled to see her rush down at Captain Markley, brandishing her parasol as if she were going to knock him down. I thought if she had any preference it would be for an army man; for you know an army woman's contempt of civilian money and position. Army women continually want to be moving on; and they hate bothering with household stuff, such as we prize.

Captain Markley did look poor-spirited, drooping against the sally-port, for a man who in his uniform was the most conspicuous figure to Mackinac girls in a ball-room. Maybe if he had been courting anything but a statue he might have made a better figure at it. Juliana was worse than a statue, though; for she could float through a thousand graceful poses, and drive a man crazy with her eyes. He wasn't the lover to go out in the woods and shoot a proposal as loud as a cannon at a girl; and it seems he couldn't get any satisfaction from her by writing notes.

Mrs. Gunning was drawing off her gloves as she marched at him with her parasol, and I remember how her emeralds and diamonds flashed in the sun—old heirlooms. I never saw another woman who had so many precious stones. She was tall, with that robust English quality that sometimes goes with slenderness. She and Juliana were not a bit alike. When she walked, her feet came down pat. I pitied Captain Markley. By leaning over the carriage I could see him give a start as Mrs. Gunning pounced at him.

“It's a fine day after the storm, Captain Markley,” says she; and he lifted his cap and said it was.

Then she made a rush that I thought would drive him down the cliff, and whirled her parasol around his head like sword-play, talking about the havoc of the storm. She rippled him from head to foot and poked at his eyes, and jabbed him, to show how lightning struck the rocks, Captain Markley all the time moving back and dodging; and to save my life I couldn't help laughing, though the sentinels above him saw it. They were pretty well used to her, and rolled their quids in their cheeks, and winked at one another.

When she had all but thrown him down-hill, she stuck the ferrule right under his nose and shook it, and says she: “Yet it is now as fine a day as if no such convulsion had ever threatened the island. It is often so in this world.”

He couldn't deny that, miserable as he looked. And I thought she would let him alone and come and say good-day to me. But no, indeed! She took him by the arm. Soldiers off duty were lounging on the benches, and Captain Markley wouldn't let them see him haled like a prisoner. He marched square-shouldered and erect; and Mrs. Gunning says to me as they reached the carriage:

“The captain will help you down if you will come with us. I am going to show him my Shanghai rooster.”

I thanked her, and gladly let him help me down. I wasn't going to desert the poor fellow when Mrs. Gunning was dealing with him; and, besides, I wanted to see that rooster myself. We heard such stories of the way she kept her chickens and labored over all the domestic animals she gathered around herself at the fort.

By ascending a steep bank on which the western block-house stands, you know you can look down into the drill-ground—that wide meadow behind the fort, with quarters at the back. Mrs. Gunning had an enclosure built outside the wall for her chickens; and there they were, walking about, scratching the ground, and diverting themselves as well as they could in their clothes. She had a shed at one end of the enclosure, and all the hens, walking about or sitting on nests, wore hoods! Holes were made for their eyes but none for their beaks, and the eyelets seemed to magnify so that they looked wrathy as they stretched their necks and quavered in those bags. Captain Markley and I both burst out laughing, but Mrs. Gunning explained it all seriously.

“They eat their eggs,” says she; “so I tie hoods on them until I have collected the eggs for the day.”

I remember some were clawing their head-gear, trying alternate feet, and two determined hens were trying to peck each other free. But they were generally resigned, and we might have grown so after the first minute, if it hadn't been for the rooster.

Captain Markley roared, and I leaned against the lower part of the block-house and held my sides. That long-legged, awkward, high-stepping Shanghai cock was dressed like a man in a suit of clothes—all but a hat. His coat-sleeves extended over his wings, and when he flapped them to crow, and stuck his claws out of his trousers-legs, I wept tears on my handkerchief. Mrs. Gunning talked straight ahead without paying any attention to our laughter. If it ever had been funny to her it had ceased to be so. She had not brought Captain Markley there to amuse him.

“Look at that Shanghai rooster now,” says she. “I brought him up from the South. I put him among the hens and they picked all his feathers off. He was as bare, captain, as your hand. He was literally hen-pecked. First one would step up to him and pull out a feather; then another; and he, poor fool, did nothing but cower against the fence. It never seemed to enter his brain-pan he could put a stop to the torture. There he was, without a feather to cover himself with, and the cool autumn nights coming on. So I took some gray cloth and made him these clothes. He would have been picked to the bone if I hadn't. But they put spunk into him. That Shanghai rooster has found out he has to assert himself, captain, and he does assert himself.”

I saw Captain Markley turn red, and I knew he wished the sentinel wasn't standing guard a few feet away in front of that block-house.

She might have let him alone after she had given him that thrust, and gone on to her house, and said good-bye in the usual way. But just as he was helping me down it happened that Juliana and Dr. McCurdy appeared through the rear sally-port, which they must have reached by skirting the wall instead of crossing the drill-field. As soon as Mrs. Gunning saw them she stiffened, and clubbed her umbrella at Captain Markley again. He couldn't get away, so he stood his ground.

“See that creature begin to curvet and roll her eyes!” says Mrs. Gunning. “If the parade-ground were full of men I think she would prance over the parapet. At my age she may have some sense and feeling. But I would be glad to see her in the hands of a man who knew how to assert himself.”

“May I ask,” says Captain Markley, “what you mean by a man's asserting himself, Mrs. Gunning?”

She made such a pounce at him with the parasol that her waist began to rip in the back.

“My dear boy, I am a full-blooded Briton, and Juliana is what you may call an English half-breed. In the bottom of our hearts we have a hankering for monarchy. The lion, who permits nobody else to poach on his preserves, is our symbol. While the vexatious child and I are not at all alike in other things, I know she admires as much as I do a man who asserts himself.”

Though it was said Juliana Gunning could not hear thunder, she generally understood her aunt's voice, and could tell when she was being talked about. She came straight to her own rescue, as you might say, and Dr. McCurdy, poor man, was very polite, but not cheerful. If we had known then what he had been yelling in the woods, we should have understood better why Captain Markley seemed to pluck up and strut at the sight of him.

I think Mrs. Gunning determined to finish the business that very hour. She met Dr. McCurdy with all the sweetness she could put into her manner just before she intended to pounce the hardest.

“I have been showing the captain my chickens,” she says, “and now I want to show you my cows.”

Dr. McCurdy thanked her, and said he would be delighted to see the cows, but he stuck to Juliana like a shadow. Maybe he expected the cows would give him a further excuse for being with her. But Mrs. Gunning cut him off there. She gave her keys to her niece, and says she:

“Go in the house, my dear, and set out the decanter and glasses, and give Captain Markley a glass of wine to keep him until we come back. I want to tell him something more about that Shanghai rooster.”

Juliana understood, and took the keys, and rolled her eyes tantalizingly at Dr. McCurdy. The poor fellow made a stand, and said the cows would do some other time, and mightn't he beg for a glass of wine too, after his walk?

“Certainly, doctor, certainly,” says Mrs. Gunning, leading the way to the front sally-port. “We expect you to take a glass with us. But while Juliana sets out the decanter, let us look at the cows.”

She hadn't mentioned me, but I didn't care for that, knowing Mrs. Gunning as I did. I should have followed if she hadn't beckoned to me, for I was as determined to see the affair through as she was to finish it.

We had to go down that long path from the front sally-port to the street, and then turn into the field at the foot of the hill, where the fort stables are. Mrs. Gunning talked all the time about cattle, flourishing her parasol and flashing her diamonds and emeralds in the sun, and telling Dr. McCurdy she had intended to ask his opinion about them ever since his arrival on the island. He answered yes, and no, and seemed to be thinking of anything but cattle.

Mackinac cows tinkled their bells in every thicket. But Mrs. Gunning's pets were brought in morning and afternoon to clean, well-lighted stalls. There they stood in a row, sleek as if they had been curried—and I have heard that she did curry them herself—all switching natural tails except one. And, as sure as you live, that cow had a false tail that Mrs. Gunning had made for her!

She took hold of it and showed it to us. It did not seem very funny to Dr. McCurdy, but he had to listen to what she said.

“Spotty was a fine cow, but by some accident she had lost her tail, and I got her cheaper on that account,” says Mrs. Gunning. “You don't know how distressing it was to see her switching a stump. So I made her a tail of whalebone and India-rubber and yarn. I knit it myself.”

The poor fellow looked up at the fort and said: “Yes. It is very interesting, Mrs. Gunning.”

“I am aware,” says she, “that the expedient was never hit upon before. But Spotty's brush is a great success. It used to make me unhappy to think of leaving this post. All the other cows might find good homes with new owners; but who would care for Spotty? Since I have supplied her deficiency, however, and know that the supply can constantly be renewed, my mind is easy about her. If you ever have to knit a cow's tail, doctor, remember the foundations are whalebone and India-rubber; and I would advise you to use the coarsest yarn you can find for the brush.”

“I will, Mrs. Gunning,” he says, like a man who wanted to lie down in the straw and die. And I couldn't laugh and relieve myself, because it was like laughing at him.

“Now that shows,” says Mrs. Gunning, and she pounced at him and shook her parasol in his face so vigorously that she ripped in the back the same as a chrysalis, “how easy it is to remedy a seemingly incurable injury.”

If he didn't understand her then, he did afterwards. But he looked as if he couldn't endure it any longer, and made for the door.

“Stop, Dr. McCurdy,” says she. “You haven't heard these cows' pedigrees.”

He stopped, and said: “How long are the pedigrees?”