Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 Read online

  II.

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT.

  In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on whichAdam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling thetears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulseunder his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words nohuman ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.

  He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness afterhis wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, shecame to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect andunearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke upshaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.

  Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot betold. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them tothe one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory ofthat perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions fordays afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven withyou, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I criedhelplessly long after I woke."

  Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many anadventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in thegrasp of emotion.

  When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there.She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew.Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothesin the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and herlittle fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes ofmist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birdswere rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming songwhen she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The firsttime she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog forher tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adamhelped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled atthe bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.

  He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in,dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which onesometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers overtheir firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of thetent.

  He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of LouisSatanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman was a beautiful, versatilefellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like anangel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touchup his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm,marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sunand wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamedequal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in ablue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in abroad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like aflower,--if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerfulnerve of manliness.

  Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on theisland, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam roseearly and trolled for lunge in deep water under the cliff. In theafternoon they all plunged into the lake, Eva swimming like acardinal-flower afloat. Adam was careful to keep near her, and finallyto help her into the boat, where she sat with her scarlet bathing-dressshining in the sun and her drenched hair curling in an arch around herface.

  All these days flashed before Adam while he put a slow foot out on thetent-rug.

  There was nobody about the camp when he had made his morning toilet andunclosed the tent-flaps, so he built a fire in the stove, hung thebedding to sun, and set out the cots. A blueness which was not humidfiltered itself through the air everywhere, and fold upon fold of itseemed rising from invisible censers on the mainland.

  Eva hailed him from the lake. She came rowing across the sun's track.The water was fresh and blue, glittering like millions of alternatelydull and burnished scales.

  Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with morereticence than usual.

  "You don't know where I have been, laddie," exclaimed Eva. "Look at allthe fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket saggeddown with gold-streaked quartz. I went around to the other side of theisland, where the counterfeiters' hole is, to look into it while themorning sun on the lake threw a reflection."

  "There's nothing wonderful to be seen there."

  "How will we know that? The rocks sound hollow all about, and there maybe a great cavern full of counterfeiters' relics. Oh, Adam, I saw LouisSatanette's sail!"

  "He comes early this morn."

  "I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore. He sayswe'll explore the counterfeiters' hole, and let us go directly afterbreakfast."

  "What is it worth the exploring?" said Adam. "Four rocks set on end, andyou crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back outagain. It's but a burrow, and ends against the hill's heart of rock.I've to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk."

  The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting andsifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray. As if there was notenough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the footof the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water. Helooked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish ortwo glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook droppedin as his excuse for loitering.

  The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake werecovered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.

  Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of theearth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at theirsummit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted fromevery crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half alifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as ifit gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figurewould bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made avegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was sohaggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.

  The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him fromhis listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jawsin the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all inwhite flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasantexhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly pastAdam.

  "What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.

  "Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."

  "You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using thedouble Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."

  Adam thought of her when she was _not_ on the lookout. He also thoughtof her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as hepulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.

  "I'll go in presently," he muttered.

  "Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving theupward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks arepetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.

  "I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."

  "Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too closeto the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke hasovercome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"

  "The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting hisposition impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graatdail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."

  Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:

  "Well, _au revoir_. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. Itwill be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not windenough to lift it."

  "Good-day to ye," responded Adam. "We'll likely shift camp before you'rethis way."

  "In so short a time?" exclaimed Louis.

  "In so lan
g a time. I'm soul-sick of it. It's lone; it's heavy. Thefine's too great for the pleasure of the feight. Look, now,--there weretwo rough laddies up Glazka way, in my country, and they came to fistsaboot a sweethairt, the fools. But when they are stripped and ready, onehits the table wi's hond, and says he, 'Ay, Georgie, I'm wullin' tofeight ye, but wha's goin' to pay the fine?'"

  Louis Satanette laughed again, but as if he did not know just what wasmeant."

  "It's a cautious mon, is the Scotchmon," said Adam, "but no' so slow,after all."

  "Oh, never slow!" said Louis. "Very, very fast indeed, to leave thisparadise in the midst of the summer."

  "'Farewell to lovely Loch Achray,'" sighed Adam: "Where shall we find, in any land, So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"

  Louis made a sign of adieu and dipped his oars.

  "It's only _au revoir_," said he, shooting past. "Be very, very far fromparting with Magog too early."

  "'So lone a lake, so sweet a strand,'" repeated Adam, dropping his headback against the stern.

  He did not move while the sound of the other's oars died away behindhim. He did not move while the afternoon shadows spread far over thewater.

  The long Canadian twilight advanced stage by stage. First, all Magogflushed, as if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine.Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endlesssuccession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainlandmountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, withslow and irregular strokes, Adam pulled away from the cliff, and broughthis keel to grate the sand in front of his tent.

  Eva was sitting there on a rock, huddling a shawl around her.

  "Oh, Adam Macgregor!" she began, in a low voice, "and do you condescendto bring your wraith back to me at last?"

  "It's nothing but my wraith," said Adam, lifting his eggs and butter andmilk, and stepping from the boat. "The mon in me died aboot noon."

  Eva walked along by his side to the cool-box, where he deposited hisload.

  "What is the matter with you, laddie, that you look and talk sostrangely?"

  "Oh, naught," said Adam, turning and facing her. "I but saw you kissingLouis Satanette on the hill to-day."