The month of July was upon the wane before husband and wife seemingly aroused to the recollection that their idyl was about to be interrupted by the invasion of a third person. Ethel, indeed, had pondered regretfully upon the coming of Cranbrooke for some days before she spoke of it to her husband; while Max!--
The real purpose of Cranbrooke's visit, dismissed from Pollock's mind with extraordinary success during the earlier weeks of their stay upon the island, had by now assumed, in spite of him, the suggestion of a death-watch set upon a prisoner. He strove not to think of it. He refrained from speaking of it. So delicious had been to him the draft of Ethel's society, uninterrupted by outsiders, in this Eden of the eastern sea; so perfect their harmony of thought and speech; so charming her beauty, heightened by salt air and outdoor exercise and early hours, Max wondered if the experience had been sent to him as an especial allowance of mercy to the condemned. To the very day of Cranbrooke's arrival, even after a trap had been sent to the evening boat to fetch him, the husband and wife refrained from discussing the expected event.
It was the hour before sunset, following a showery afternoon; and, standing together upon their lawn to look at the western sky, Max proposed to her to go out with him for awhile in the canoe. They ran like children, hand in hand, to the wharf, where, lifting the frail birch-bark craft from its nest, he set it lightly afloat. Ethel, stepping expertly into her place, was followed by Max, who, in his loose cheviot shirt, barearmed and bareheaded, flashing his red-dyed paddle in the clear water, seemed to her the embodiment of manly grace and strength.
They steered out into the bay; and, as they paused to look back upon the shore, the glory of the scene grew to be unspeakable. Behind the village, over which the electric globes had not yet begun to gleam, towered Newport, a rampart of glowing bronze, arched by a rainbow printed upon a brooding cloud. Elsewhere, the multicolored sky flamed with changing hues, reflected in a sea of glass. And out of this sea arose wooded islands; and, far on the opposite shore of the mainland, the triple hills had put on a vestment of deepest royal purple.
"I like to look away from the splendor, to the side that is in shadow," said Ethel. "See, along that eastern coast, how the reflected sunlight is flashed from the windows on that height, and the blue columns of hearth smoke arise from the chimneys! Doesn't it make you somehow rejoice that, when the color fades, as it soon must, we shall still have our home and the lights we make for ourselves to go back to?"
There was a long silence.
"What has set you to moralizing, dear?" he asked, trying to conceal that he had winced at her innocent question.
"Oh! nothing. Only, when one is supremely happy, as I am now, one is afraid to believe it will endure. How mild the air is to-night! Look over yonder, Max; the jewelled necklace of Sorrento's lights has begun to palpitate. Let us paddle around that fishing-schooner before we turn."
"Ethel, you are crying."
"Am I? Then it is for pure delight. I think, Max, we had never so fine an inspiration as that of coming to Mount Desert. My idea of the place has always been of a lot of rantipole gaieties, and people crowded in hotels. While this--it is a little like Norway, and a great deal like Southern Italy. Besides, when before have we been so completely to ourselves as in that gray stone lodge by the waterside, with its hood of green ivy, and the green hill rising behind it? Let us come every year; better still, let us build ourselves a summer home upon these shores."
"Should you like me to buy the cottage we now have, so that you can keep it to come to when you like?"
"When _you_ like, you mean. Max, it can't be you have caught cold in this soft air, but your voice sounds a little hoarse. Well! I suppose we must go in, for Mr. Cranbrooke will be arriving very soon."
Ethel's sigh found an echo in one from her husband, at which the April-natured young woman laughed.
"There, it's out! We don't want even Cranbrooke, do we? To think the poor, dear man's coming should have been oppressing both of us, and neither would be first to acknowledge it! After all, Max darling, it is your fault. It was you who proposed Cranbrooke. I knew, all along, that I'd be better satisfied with you alone. Now, we must just take the consequence of your overhasty hospitality, and make him as happy as we are--if we can."
"If we can!" said Max; and she saw an almost pathetic expression drift across his face--an expression that bewildered her.
"Why do you look so rueful over him?"
"I am thinking, perhaps, how hard it will be for him to look at happiness through another man's eyes."
"Nonsense! Mr. Cranbrooke is quite satisfied with his own lot. He is one of those self-contained men who could never really love, I think,"
said Mrs. Pollock, conclusively.
"He has in some way failed to show you his best side. He has the biggest, tenderest heart! I wish there was a woman fit for him, somewhere. But Stephen will never marry, now, I fear. She who gets him will be lucky--he is a very tower of strength to those who lean on him."
"As far as strength goes, Max, you could pick him up with your right hand. It may be silly, but I do love your size and vigor; when I see you in a crowd of average men, I exult in you. Imagine any woman who could get _you_ wanting a thin, sallow person like Cranbrooke!"
"He can be fascinating, when he chooses," said Max.
"The best thing about Cranbrooke, Max, is that he loves you," answered his wife, wilfully.
"Then I want you, henceforth, to try to like him better, dear; to like him for himself. He is coming in answer to my urgent request; and I feel certain the more you know of him, the more you will trust in him.
At any rate, give him as much of your dear self as I can spare, and you will be sure of pleasing me."
"Max, now I believe it is you who are crying because you are too happy. I never heard such a solemn cadence in your voice. I don't want a minute of this lovely time to be sad. When we were in town, I fancied you were down--about something; now, you are yourself again; let me be happy without alloy. I am determined to be the _cigale_ of the French fable, and dance and sing away the summer. Between us, we may even succeed in making that sober Cranbrooke a reflection of us both. There, now, the light has faded; quicken your speed; we must go ashore and meet him. See, the moon has risen--O Max darling, to please me, paddle in that silver path!"
This was the Ethel her husband liked best to see,--a child in her quick variations of emotion, a woman in steadfast tenderness.
Conquering his own strongly excited feeling, he smiled on her indulgently; and when, their landing reached, Cranbrooke's tall form was descried coming down the bridge to receive them, he was able to greet his friend with an unshadowed face.
The three went in to dinner, which Ethel, taking advantage of the soft, dry air, had ordered to be served in a _loggia_ opening upon the water. The butler, a sympathetic Swede, had decked their little round table with wild roses in shades of shell-pink, deepening to crimson.
The candles, burning under pale-green shades, were scarcely stirred by the faint breeze. Hard, indeed, to believe that, upon occasion, that couchant monster, the bay, could break up into huge waves, ramping shoreward, leaping over the rock wall, upon the lawn, up to the _loggia_ floor, and there beat for admission to the house, upon storm-shutters hastily erected to meet its onslaught!
To-night, a swinging lantern of wrought iron sent down through its panels of opal glass a gentle illumination upon three well-pleased faces gathered around the dainty little feast. Ethel, who, in the days of gipsying, would allow no toilets of ceremony, retained her sailor-hat, with the boat-gown of white serge, in which her infantile beauty showed to its best advantage. Cranbrooke was dazzled by the new bloom upon her face, the new light in her eye.
Pollock, too, tall, broad-shouldered, blonde, clean-shaven save for a mustache, his costume of white flannel enhancing duly the transparent healthiness of his complexion, looked wonderfully well--so Cranbrooke thought and said.
"Does he not?" cried Ethel, exultingly. "I knew you would think so.
Max has been reconstructed since we have lived outdoors in this wonderful air. Just wait, Mr. Cranbrooke, till we have done with you, and you, too, will be blossoming like the rose."
"I, that was a desert, you would say," returned Cranbrooke, smiling.
Involuntarily it occurred to him to contrast his own outer man with that of his host. Somehow or other, the fond, satisfied look Ethel bestowed upon her lord aroused anew in their friend an old, teasing spirit of envy of nature's bounty to another, denied to him.
As the moon transmuted to silver the stretch of water east of them, and the three sat over the table, with its _carafes_ and decanters and egg-shell coffee-cups, till the flame of a cigar-lighter died utterly in its silver beak, their talk touching all subjects pleasantly, Cranbrooke persuaded himself he had indeed been dreaming a bad dream.
The journey thither, of which every mile had been like the link of a chain, was, for him, after all, a mere essay at pleasure-seeking. He had come on to spend a jolly holiday with a couple of the nicest people in the world--nothing more! His fancies, his plans, his devices, conceived in sore distress of spirit, were relegated to the world of shadows, whence they had been summoned.
When Ethel left the two men for the night, and the butler came out to collect his various belongings, Pollock rose and bade Cranbrooke accompany him to see the mountains from the other side of the house.
Here, turning their backs on the enchantment of the water view, they looked up at an amphitheatre of hills, dominated in turn by rocky summits gleaming in the moon. But for the lap of the water upon the coast, the stir of a fresh wind arising to whisper to the leaves of a clump of birches, Mother Earth around them was keeping silent vigil.
"What a perfect midsummer night!" said Cranbrooke, drawing a deep breath of enjoyment. "After the heat and dust of that three hundred miles of railway journey from Boston, this _is_ a reward!"
"We chose better than we knew the scene of my euthanasia," answered Pollock, without a tremor in his voice.
A thrill ran through Cranbrooke's veins. He could have sworn the air had suddenly become chill, as if an iceberg had floated into the bay.
He tried to respond, and found himself babbling words of weak conventionality; and all the while the soul of the strong man within him was saying: "It must not be. It shall not be. If I live, I shall rescue you from this ghastly phantom."
"Don't think it necessary to give words to what you feel for me," said Pollock, smiling slightly. "You are not making a brilliant success of it, old man, and you'd better stop. And don't suppose I mean to continue to entertain my guest by lugubrious discussions of my approaching _finale_. Only, it is necessary that you should know several things, since the event may take us unawares. I have made you my executor, and Ethel gets all there is; that's the long and short of my will, properly signed, attested, and deposited with my lawyer before I left town. Ethel's mother and sisters will be returning to Newport in a fortnight, and they will, no doubt, come to the poor child when she needs them. There _must_ be some compensation for a decree of this kind, and I have it in the absolute bliss I have enjoyed since we came here. That child-wife of mine is the most enchanting creature in the world. If I were not steeped in selfishness, I could wish she loved me a little less. But all emotions pass, and even Ethel's tears will dry."
"Good Heaven, Max, you are talking like a machine! One would think this affair of yours certain. Who are you, to dare to penetrate the mystery of the decrees of your Maker--"
"None of that, if you please, Cranbrooke," interrupted Pollock; "I have fought every inch of the way along there, by myself, and have been conquered by my conviction. Did I tell you that my father, before me, struggled with similar remonstrances from _his_ friends? The parsons even brought bell and book to exorcise his tormentor--and all in vain. He was snuffed out in full health, as I shall be, and why should I whine at following him? Come, my dear fellow, I am keeping you out of a capital bed, from sleep you must require. There's but one matter in which you can serve me,--take Ethel into your care. Win her fullest confidence; let her know that when I am not there, _you will be_."
Cranbrooke went to his room, but not to rest. When his friends next saw him, he was returning from a solitary cruise about the bay in a catboat Pollock kept at anchor near their wharf.
"Why, Mr. Cranbrooke!" cried Ethel, lightly. "The boatman says you have been out ever since daybreak. But that we espied the boat tacking about beyond that far rock, I should have been for sending in search of you."
"Cranbrooke is an accomplished sailor," said Max. "But just now, breakfast's the thing for him, Ethel. See that he is well fed, while I stroll out to the stable and look after the horses."
As he crossed the greensward, Ethel's gaze followed him, till he disappeared behind a clump of trees. Then she turned to her guest.
"Let me serve you with all there is, until they bring you something hot," she said, with her usual half-flippant consideration of him. "Do you know you look very seedy? I have, for my part, no patience with these early morning exploits."
"If you could have seen the world awakening as I saw it, this morning, you would condone my offence," he answered, a curious expression Ethel thought she had detected in his eyes leaving them unclouded, as he spoke.
Chapter III