When you have fallen asleep listening to the hymns of the gods it is something of an anticlimax to be wakened by an ignominious tumble from a haystack. But at least it had aroused them in time to see the sunrise over Indian Head, which was worth the sacrifice of several hours of inglorious ease.
“Besides, I might never have known what an exquisite thing a spider's web beaded with dew is,” said Emily. “Look at it—swung between those two tall, plumy grasses.”
“Write a poem on it,” jeered Ilse, whose alarm made her fleetingly cross.
“How’s your foot?”
“Oh, it’s all right. But my hair is sopping wet with dew.”
“So is mine. We'll carry our hats for a while and the sun will soon dry us. It’s just as well to get an early start. We can get back to civilisation by the time it’s safe for us to be seen. Only we'll have to breakfast on the crackers in my bag. It won’t do for us to be looking for breakfast, with no rational account to give of where we spent the night. Ilse, swear you’ll never mention this escapade to a living soul. It’s been beautiful—but it will remain beautiful just as long as only we two know of it. Remember the result of your telling about our moonlit bath.”
“People have such beastly minds,” grumbled Ilse, sliding down the stack.
“Oh, look at Indian Head. I could be a sun worshipper this very moment.”
Indian Head was a flaming mount of splendour. The far-off hills turned beautifully purple against the radiant sky. Even the bare, ugly Hardscrabble Road was transfigured and luminous in hazes of silver. The fields and woods were very lovely in the faint pearly lustre.
“The world is always young again for just a few moments at the dawn,” murmured Emily.
Then she pulled her Jimmy-book out of her bag and wrote the sentence down!
They had the usual experiences of canvassers the world over that day. Some people refused to subscribe, ungraciously: some subscribed graciously: some refused to subscribe so pleasantly that they left an agreeable impression: some consented to subscribe so unpleasantly that Emily wished they had refused. But on the whole they enjoyed the forenoon, especially when an excellent early dinner in a hospitable farmhouse on the Western Road filled up the aching void left by a few crackers and a night on a haystack.
“S’pose you didn’t come across any stray children today?” asked their host.
“No. Have any been lost?”
“Little Allan Bradshaw—Will Bradshaw’s son, downriver at Malvern Point—has been missing ever since Tuesday morning. He walked out of the house that morning, singing, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.”
Emily and Ilse exchanged shocked glances.
“How old was he?”
“Just seven—and an only child. They say his poor ma is plumb distracted. All the Malvern Point men have been s’arching for him for two days, and not a trace of him kin they discover.”
“What can have happened to him?” said Emily, pale with horror.
“It’s a mystery. Some think he fell off the wharf at the Point—it was only about a quarter of a mile from the house and he used to like sitting there and watching the boats. But nobody saw anything of him ’round the wharf or the bridge that morning. There’s a lot of marshland west of the Bradshaw farm, full of bogs and pools. Some think he must have wandered there and got lost and perished—ye remember Tuesday night was terrible cold. That's where his mother thinks he is—and if you ask me, she’s right. If he’d been anywhere else he’d have been found by the s’arching parties. They’ve combed the country.”
The story haunted Emily all the rest of the day and she walked under its shadow. Anything like that always took almost a morbid hold on her. She could not bear the thought of the poor mother at Malvern Point. And the little lad—where was he? Where had he been the previous night when she had lain in the ecstasy of wild, free hours? That night had not been cold—but Wednesday night had. And she shuddered as she recalled Tuesday night, when a bitter autumnal windstorm had raged till dawn, with showers of hail and stinging rain. Had he been out in that—the poor lost baby?
“Oh, I can’t bear it!” she moaned.
“It’s dreadful,” agreed Ilse, looking rather sick, “but we can’t do anything. There’s no use in thinking of it. Oh”—suddenly Ilse stamped her foot—“I believe Father used to be right when he didn’t believe in God. Such a hideous thing as this—how could it happen if there is a God—a decent God, anyway?”
“God hadn’t anything to do with this,” said Emily.
“You know the Power that made last night couldn’t have brought about this monstrous thing.”
“Well, He didn’t prevent it,” retorted Ilse—who was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.
“Little Allan Bradshaw may be found yet—he must be,” exclaimed Emily.
“He won't be found alive,” stormed Ilse. “No, don’t talk to me about God. And don’t talk to me of this. I’ve got to forget it—I’ll go crazy if I don’t.”
Ilse put the matter out of her mind with another stamp of her foot and Emily tried to. She could not quite succeed but she forced herself to concentrate superficially on the business of the day, though she knew the horror lurked in the back of her consciousness. Only once did she really forget it—when they came around a point on the Malvern River Road and saw a little house built in the cup of a tiny bay, with a steep grassy hill rising behind it. Scattered over the hill were solitary, beautifully shaped young fir-trees like little green, elongated pyramids. No other house was in sight. All about it was a lovely autumnal solitude of grey, swift-running, windy river, and red, spruce-fringed points.
“That house belongs to me,” said Emily.
Ilse stared.
“To you?”
“Yes. Of course, I don’t own it. But haven’t you sometimes seen houses that you knew belonged to you no matter who owned them?”
No, Ilse hadn’t. She hadn’t the least idea what Emily meant.
“I know who owns that house,” she said. “It’s Mr. Scobie of Kingsport. He built it for a summer cottage. I heard Aunt Net talking of it the last time I was in Wiltney. It was finished a few weeks ago. It’s a pretty little house, but too small for me. I like a big house—I don’t want to feel cramped and crowded—especially in summer.”
“It’s hard for a big house to have any personality,” said Emily thoughtfully. “But little houses almost always have. That house is full of it. There isn’t a line or a corner that isn’t eloquent, and those casement windows are lovable—especially that little one high up under the eaves over the front door. It’s absolutely smiling at me. Look at it glowing like a jewel in the sunshine out of the dark shingle setting. The little house is greeting us. You dear friendly thing, I love you—I understand you. As Old Kelly would say, ‘may niver a tear be shed under your roof.’ The people who are going to live in you must be nice people or they would never have thought you. If I lived in you, beloved, I’d always stand at that western window at evening to wave to some one coming home. That is just exactly what that window was built for—a frame for love and welcome.”
“When you get through with talking to your house we'd better hurry on,” warned Ilse. “There’s a storm coming up. See those clouds—and those sea-gulls. Gulls never come up this far except before a storm. It’s going to rain any minute. We'll not sleep on a haystack tonight, Friend Emily.”
Emily loitered. past the little house and looked at it lovingly as long as she could. It was such a dear little place with its dubbed-off gables and rich, brown shingle tints, and its general intimate air of sharing mutual jokes and secrets. She turned around half a dozen times to look upon it, as they climbed the steep hill, and when at last it dipped below sight she sighed.
“I hate to leave it. I have the oddest feeling, Ilse, that it’s calling to me—that I ought to go back to it.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Ilse impatiently. “There—it’s sprinkling now! If you hadn’t poked so long looking at your blessed little hut we’d have been out on the main road now, and near shelter. Wow, but it’s cold!”
“It’s going to be a dreadful night,” said Emily in a low voice. “Oh, Ilse, where is that poor little lost boy tonight? I wish I knew if they had found him.”
“Don’t!” said Ilse savagely. “Don’t say another word about him. It’s awful—it’s hideous—but what can we do?”
“Nothing. That’s the dreadful thing about it. It seems wicked to go on about our own business, asking for subscriptions, when that child is not found.”
By this time they had reached the main road. The rest of the afternoon was not pleasant. Stinging showers came at intervals: between them the world was raw and damp and cold, with a moaning wind that came in ominous sighing gusts under a leaden sky. At every house where they called they were reminded of the lost baby, for there were only women to give or refuse subscriptions. The men were all away searching for him.
“Though it isn’t any use now,” said one woman gloomily, “except that they may find his little body. He can’t have lived this long. I jest can’t eat or cook for thinking of his poor mother. They say she’s nigh crazy—I don’t wonder.”
“They say old Margaret McIntyre is taking it quite calmly,” said an older woman, who was piecing a logcabin quilt by the window. “I’d have thought she’d be wild, too. She seemed real fond of little Allan.”
“Oh, Margaret McIntyre has never got worked up about anything for the past five years—ever since her own son Neil was frozen to death in the Klondyke. Seems as if her feelings were frozen then, too—she’s been a little mad ever since. She won’t worry none over this—she’ll just smile and tell you she spanked the King.”
Both women laughed. Emily, with the story-teller’s nose, scented a story instantly, but though she would fain have lingered to hunt it down Ilse hustled her away.
“We must get on, Emily, or we'll never reach St. Clair before night.”
They soon realised that they were not going to reach it. At sunset St. Clair was still three miles away and there was every indication of a wild evening.
“We can’t get to St. Clair, that’s certain,” said Ilse. “It’s going to settle down for a steady rain and it’ll be as black as a million black cats in a quarter of an hour. We'd better go to that house over there and ask if we can stay all night. It looks snug and respectable—though it certainly is the jumping-off place.”
The house at which Ilse pointed—an old whitewashed house with a grey roof—was set on the face of a hill amid bright green fields of clover aftermath. A wet red road wound up the hill to it. A thick grove of spruces shut it off from the gulf shore, and beyond the grove a tiny dip in the land revealed a triangular glimpse of misty, white-capped, grey sea. The near brook valley was filled with young spruces, dark-green in the rain. The grey clouds hung heavily over it. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds in the west for one magical moment. The hill of clover meadows flashed instantly into incredibly vivid green. The triangle of sea shimmered into violet. The old house gleamed like white marble against the emerald of its hilly background, and the inky black sky over and around it.
“Oh,” gasped Emily, “I never saw anything so wonderful!”
She groped wildly in her bag and clutched her Jimmy-book. The post of a field-gate served as a desk—Emily licked a stubborn pencil and wrote feverishly. Ilse squatted on a stone in a fence corner and waited with ostentatious patience. She knew that when a certain look appeared on Emily’s face she was not to be dragged away until she was ready to go. The sun had vanished and the rain was beginning to fall again when Emily put her Jimmy-book back into her bag, with a sigh of satisfaction.
“I had to get it, Ilse.”
“Couldn’t you have waited till you got to dry land and wrote it down from memory?” grumbled Ilse, uncoiling herself from her stone.
“No—I’d have missed some of the flavour then. I’ve got it all now—and in just exactly the right words. Come on—I’ll race you to the house. Oh, smell that wind—there’s nothing in all the world like a salt sea-wind—a savage salt sea-wind. After all, there’s something delightful in a storm. There’s always something—deep down in me—that seems to rise and leap out to meet a storm—wrestle with it.”
“I feel that way sometimes—but not tonight,” said Ilse. “I’m tired—and that poor baby”
“Oh!” Emily’s triumph and exultation went from her in a cry of pain. “Oh—Ilse—I’d forgotten for a moment—how could I? Where can he be?”
“Dead,” said Ilse harshly. “It’s better to think so—than to think of him alive still—out tonight. Come, we've got to get in somewhere. The storm is on for good now—no more showers.”
An angular woman panoplied in a white apron so stiffly starched that it could easily have stood alone, opened the door of the house on the hill and bade them enter.
“Oh, yes, you can stay here, I reckon,” she said, not inhospitably, “if you’ll excuse things being a bit upset. They’re in sad trouble here.”
“Oh—I’m sorry,” stammered Emily. ‘We won’t intrude—we'll go somewhere else.”
“Oh, we don’t mind you, if you don’t mind us. There’s a spare room. You're welcome. You can’t go on in a storm like this—there isn’t another house for some ways. I advise you to stop here. I'll get you a bit of supper—I don’t live here—I’m just a neighbour come to help ’em out a bit. Hollinger’s my name—Mrs. Julia Hollinger. Mrs. Bradshaw ain’t good for anything—you’ve heard of her little boy mebbe.”
“Is this where—and—he—hasn’t—been found?”
“No—never will be. I’m not mentioning it to her”—with a quick glance over her shoulder along the hall—“but it’s my opinion he got in the quicksands down by the bay. That’s what I think. Come in and lay off your things. I s’pose you don’t mind eating in the kitchen. The room is cold—we haven’t the stove up in it yet. It'll have to be put up soon if there’s a funeral. I s’pose there won’t be if he’s in the quicksand. You can’t have a funeral without a body, can you?”
All this was very gruesome. Emily and Ilse would fain have gone elsewhere—but the storm had broken in full fury and darkness seemed to pour in from the sea over the changed world. They took off their drenched hats and coats and followed their hostess to the kitchen, a clean, old-fashioned spot which seemed cheerful enough in lamp-light and fire-glow.
“Sit up to the fire. I’ll poke it a bit. Don’t mind Grandfather Bradshaw—Grandfather, here’s two young ladies that want to stay all night.”
Grandfather stared stonily at them out of little, hazy, blue eyes and said not a word.
“Don’t mind him”—in a pig’s whisper—“he’s over ninety and he never was much of a talker. Clara—Mrs. Bradshaw—is in there”—nodding towards the door of what seemed a small bedroom off the kitchen. “Her brother’s with her—Dr. McIntyre from Charlottetown. We sent for him yesterday. He’s the only one that can do anything with her. She’s been walking the floor all day but we’ve got her persuaded to lie down a bit. Her husband’s out looking for little Allan.”
“A child can’t be lost in the nineteenth century,” said Grandfather Bradshaw, with uncanny suddenness and positiveness.
“There, there now, Grandfather, I advise you not to get worked up. And this is the twentieth century now. He’s still living back there. His memory stopped a few years ago. What might your names be? Burnley? Starr? From Blair Water? Oh, then you'll know the Murrays? Niece? Oh!”
Mrs. Julia Hollinger’s “Oh” was subtly eloquent. She had been setting dishes and food down at a rapid rate on the clean oil-cloth on the table. Now she swept them aside, extracted a table-cloth from a drawer of the cupboard, got silver forks and spoons out of another drawer, and a handsome pair of salt and pepper shakers from the shelves.
“Don’t go to any trouble for us,” pleaded Emily.
“Oh, it’s no trouble. If all was well here you'd find Mrs. Bradshaw real glad to have you. She’s a very kind woman, poor soul. It’s awful hard to see her in such trouble. Allan was all the child she had, you see.”
“A child can’t be lost in the nineteenth century, I tell you,” repeated Grandfather Bradshaw, with an irritable shift of emphasis.
“No—no,” soothingly, “of course not, Grandfather. Little Allan’ll turn up all right yet. Here’s a hot cup o’ tea for you. I advise you to drink it. That’ll keep him quiet for a bit. Not that he’s ever very fussy—only everybody’s a bit upset—except old Mrs. McIntyre. Nothing ever upsets her. It’s just as well, only it seems to me real unfeeling. ’Course, she isn’t just right. Come, sit in and have a bite, girls. Listen to that rain, will you? The men will be soaked. They can’t search much longer tonight—Will will soon be home. I sorter dread it—Clara’ll go wild again when he comes home without little Allan. We had a terrible time with her last night, pore thing.”
“A child can’t be lost in the nineteenth century,” said Grandfather Bradshaw—and choked over his hot drink in his indignation
‘“No—nor in the twentieth neither,” said Mrs. Hollinger, patting him on the back. “I advise you to go to bed, Grandfather. You're tired.”
“I am not tired and I will go to bed when I choose, Julia Hollinger.”
“Oh, very well, Grandfather. I advise you not to get worked up. I think I'll take a cup o’ tea in to Clara. Perhaps she’ll take it now. She hasn’t eaten or drunk since Tuesday night. How can a woman stand that—I put it to you?”
Emily and Ilse ate their supper with what appetite they could summon up, while Grandfather Bradshaw watched them suspiciously, and sorrowful sounds reached them from the little inner room.
“It is wet and cold tonight—where is he—my little son?” moaned a woman’s voice, with an undertone of agony that made Emily writhe as if she felt it herself.
“They'll find him soon, Clara,” said Mrs. Hollinger, in a sprightly tone of artificial comfort. “Just you be patient—take a sleep, I advise you—they’re bound to find him soon.”
“They'll never find him.” The voice was almost a scream now. “He is dead—he is dead—he died that bitter cold Tuesday night so long ago. O God, have mercy! He was such a little fellow! And I’ve told him so often not to speak until he was spoken to—he’ll never speak to me again. I wouldn’t let him have a light after he went to bed—and he died in the dark, alone and cold. I wouldn’t let him have a dog—he wanted one so much. But he wants nothing now—only a grave and a shroud.”
“I can’t endure this,” muttered Emily. “I can’t, Ilse. I feel as if I’d go mad with horror. I’d rather be out in the storm.”
Lank Mrs. Hollinger, looking at once sympathetic and important, came out of the bedroom and shut the door.
“Awful, isn’t it! She'll go on like that all night. Would you like to go to bed? It’s quite airly, but mebbe you're tired an’ ’ud ruther be where you can’t hear her, pore soul. She wouldn’t take the tea—she’s scared the doctor put a sleeping pill in it. She doesn’t want to sleep till he’s found, dead or alive. If he’s in the quicksands o’ course he never will be found.”
“Julia Hollinger, you are a fool and the daughter of a fool, but surely even you must see that a child can’t be lost in the nineteenth century,” said Grandfather Bradshaw.
“Well, if it was anybody but you called me a fool, Grandfather, I’d be mad,” said Mrs. Hollinger, a trifle tartly. She lighted a lamp and took the girls upstairs. “I hope you'll sleep. I advise you to get in between the blankets though there’s sheets on the bed. They wuz all aired today, blankets and sheets. I thought it’d be better to air ’em in case there was a funeral. I remember the New Moon Murrays wuz always particular about airing their beds, so I thought I’d mention it. Listen to that wind. We'll likely hear of awful damage from this storm. I wouldn’t wonder if the roof blew off this house tonight. Troubles never come singly. I advise you not to git upset if you hear a noise through the night. If the men bring the body home Clara’ll likely act like all possessed, pore thing. Mebbe you'd better turn the key in the lock. Old Mrs. McIntyre wanders round a bit sometimes. She’s quite harmless and mostly sane enough but it gives folks a start.”
The girls felt relieved as the door closed behind Mrs. Hollinger. She was a good soul, doing her neighbourly duty as she conceived it, faithfully, but she was not exactly cheerful company. They found themselves in a tiny, meticulously neat “spare room” under the sloping eaves. Most of the space in it was occupied by a big comfortable bed that looked as if it were meant to be slept in, and not merely to decorate the room. A little four-paned window, with a spotless white muslin frill, shut them in from the cold, stormy night that was on the sea.
“Ugh,” shivered Ilse, and got into the bed as speedily as possible. Emily followed her more slowly, forgetting about the key. Ilse, tired out, fell asleep almost immediately, but Emily could not sleep. She lay and suffered, straining her ears for the sound of footsteps. The rain dashed against the window, not in drops, but sheets, the wind snarled and shrieked. Down below the hill she heard the white waves ravening along the dark shore. Could it be only twenty-four hours since that moonlit, summery glamour of the haystack and the ferny pasture? Why, that must have been in another world.
Where was that poor lost child? In one of the pauses of the storm she fancied she heard a little whimper overhead in the dark as if some lonely little soul, lately freed from the body, were trying to find its way to kin. She could discover no way of escape from her pain: her gates of dream were shut against her: she could not detach her mind from her feelings and dramatise them. Her nerves grew strained and tense. Painfully she sent her thoughts out into the storm, seeking, striving to pierce the mystery of the child’s whereabouts. He must be found—she clenched her hands—he must. That poor mother!
“O God, let him be found, safe—let him be found, safe,” Emily prayed desperately and insistently, over and over again—all the more desperately and insistently because it seemed a prayer so impossible of fulfilment. But she reiterated it to bar out of her mind terrible pictures of swamp and quicksand and river, until at last she was so weary that mental torture could no longer keep her awake, and she fell into a troubled slumber, while the storm roared on and the baffled searchers finally gave up their vain quest.