FullReads

One chilly gloaming there was no calling at the Rhonefoot. Nevertheless Grace rowed over and waited, imagining that all evil had befallen her lover. Within, her aunt Barbara fretted and murmured at her absence, driving her silent sister into involved refuges of lies to shield young Grace Allen, whom her soul loved.

The next day went by as the night had passed, with an awful constriction about her heart, a numbness over all her body; yet Grace did her work as one who dares not stop.

Two serving-men crossed in the ferry-boat, unconcernedly talking over the country news as men do when they meet.

“Did ye hear aboot young Jeffray?” asked the herd from the Mains.

“Whatna Jeffray?” asked, without much show of interest, the ploughman from Drumglass.

“Wi’ man, the young lad that the daft folk in Enbra sent here for Sheriff.”

“I didna ken he was hereawa’,” said the Mains, with a purely perfunctory surprise.

“Ou ay, he has been a feck ower by at the Barr. They say he’s gaun to get marriet to the youngest dochter. She’s hae a gye fat stockin’-fit, I’se warrant.”

“Ye may say sae, or a lawyer wadna come speerin’ her,” returned him from Drumglass as the boat reached the farther side.

“Guid-e’en to ye, Grace,” said they both as they put their pennies down on the little tin plate in the corner.

“She’s an awesome still lassie, that,” said the Mains, as he took the road down to Parton Raw, where he had trysted with a maid of another sort. “Did ye notice she never said a word to us, neyther ‘Thank ye,’ nor yet ‘Guid-day’? Her een were fair stelled in her head.”

“Na, I didna observe,” said Drumglass cotman indifferently.

“Some fowk are like swine. They notice nocht that’s no pitten intil the trough afore them!” said the Mains indignantly.

So they parted, each to his own errand.

Day swayed and swirled into a strange night of shooting stars and intensest darkness. The soul of Grace Allen wandered in blackest night. Sometimes the earth appeared ready to open and swallow her up. Sometimes she seemed to be wandering by the side of the great pool of the Black Water with her hands full of flowers. There were roses blush-red, like what he had said her cheeks were sometimes. There were velvety pansies, and flowers of strange intoxicating perfume, the like of which she had never seen. But at every few yards she felt that she must fling them all into the black water and fare forth into the darkness to gather more.

Then in her bed she would start up, hearing the hail of a dear voice calling to her from the Rhonefoot. Once she put on her clothes in haste and would have gone forth; but her aunt Annie, waking and startled, a tall, gaunt apparition, came to her.

“Grace Allen,” she said, “where are you gangin’ at this time o’ the nicht?”

“There’s somebody at the boat,” she said, “waiting. Let me gang, Aunt Annie: they want me; I hear them cry. O Annie, I hear them crying as a bairn cries!”

“Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass,” said her aunt gently. “There’s naebody there.”

“Or gin there be,” said Aunt Barbara from her bed, “e’en let them cry. Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin’ aboot?”

So the daylight came, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and dip of oar.

Late on in the gloaming of the third day following, Aunt Annie went down to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water’s edge. Something black was knocking dully against it.

Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the shore or going within out of the chill wind to endure Barbara’s bitter tongue.

The black thing that knocked was the small boat, broken loose from her moorings and floating helplessly. Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled it to the shore. Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there was nothing and no one inside.