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V

Late in the afternoon the canoe, heavily festooned with dripping water-lilies, moved like a shadow over the shining sands. The tall hemlocks walled the river with palisades unbroken; the calm water stretched away into the forest’s sombre depths, barred here and there by dusty sunbeams.

Over them, in the highest depths of the unclouded blue, towered an eagle, suspended from mid-zenith. Under them the shadow of their craft swept the yellow gravel.

Knee to knee, vis-a-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation.

“I simply shall depart this life if you go to-morrow,” she said, looking at him.

The unfeigned misery in his face made her smile adorably, but she would not permit him to touch her.

“See to what you have brought me!” she said. “I’m utterly unable to live without you. And now what are you going to do with me?”

Her eyes were very tender. He caught her hand and kissed it, and laid it against his face.

“There is a way,” he said.

“A way?”

“Shall I lead? Would you follow?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, amused.

“There is a way,” he repeated. “That thread of a brook leads to it.”

He pointed off to the westward, where through the forest a stream, scarcely wider than the canoe, flowed deep and silent between its mounds of moss.

He picked up the paddle and touched the blade to the water; the canoe swung westward.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.

“If we turned back now,” she said, “it would be sunset before we reached the club.”

“What do we care?” he laughed. “Look!”

Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the sinking sun.

Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moist meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the stream wound in pools of gold.

The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole in drops of fire.

There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered on something that might have been a long reed quivering.

“An old friend fishing yonder,” he said, quietly; “I knew he would be there.” He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. “That is the parson of Foxville,” he said. “We will need him before we go to London.”

She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaning flashed out like a sunbeam.

“Do–do you wish–that–now?” she faltered.

He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.

“No, no!”–she whispered, with bent head–“I cannot; don’t take me so–so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it.”

He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.

“Oh, we are quite mad,” she said, unsteadily.

“I am glad we are,” he said.

The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh in flickering flight.

The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into his pool and swing shoreward.

The parson of Foxville was a very old man–almost too old to fish for trout.

Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.

Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered at her with his aged eyes, saying, “You are quite mad, my child, and very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be much safer if you were married.”

Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.

A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths–that was her fate–with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.

And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husband and shambled away across the meadows.

Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing the bride of an hour, her head on her husband’s knees. The stars came out to watch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle’s wake, stringing away, twinkling in the starlight.

Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on his knees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead.

A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyes like rubies in the dark.

Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windows of the house glimmered, reflected in the water.

Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, rising in chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting.

“I’ve a word to say to you,” snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in his ward’s ear–“and another word for your fool of an aunt!”

She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. “What do you mean?” she stammered; “we–we are married. Will you not speak to my–my husband?”

A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh.

“You’re all right, Jim,” said the elder Crawford, slowly. “Ophir Steel won’t slip through your fingers when I’m under the sod. Been married long, Jim?”