A Daughter of the Forest by Evelyn Raymond (best classic novels txt) 📖

“The boatman’s song is borne along far over the water so blue,
And loud and clear, the voice we hear of the boatman so honest
and true;
He’s rowing, rowing, rowing along,
He’s rowing, rowing, rowing along—
He’s rowing and singing his song.”

Ghosts should sing hymns, not jolly little ballads like this, in which one could catch the very rhythm and dip of oar or paddle. Still, it was as well to wait and see if this were flesh or apparition before pronouncing judgment.

It was certainly a canoe, snowy white and most familiar—so familiar that the watcher began to lose her first terror. A girl knelt in it, Indian fashion, gracefully and evenly dipping her paddle to the melody of her lips. Her bare head was thrown back and her fair hair floated loose. Her face was lighted by the western glow, on which she fixed her eyes with such intentness that she did not perceive the woman who awaited her with now such mixed emotions.

But Tom saw. Tom, the eagle, perched in the bow, keen of vision and of prejudice. Between him and old Angelique was a grudge of long standing. Whenever they met, even after a brief separation, he expressed his feelings by his hoarsest screech. He did so now and, by so doing, recalled Margot from sky-gazing and his enemy from doubt.

“Ah! Angelique! Watching for me? How kind of you. Hush, Tom. Let her alone, good Angelique, poor Angelique!”

The eagle flapped his wings with a melancholy disdain and plunged his beak in his breast. The old woman on the beach was not worth minding, after all, by a monarch of the sky—as he would be but for his broken wing—but the girl was worth everything, even his obedience.

She laughed at his sulkiness, plying her paddle the faster, and soon reached the pebbly beach, where she sprang out, and drawing her canoe out of the water, swept her old nurse a curtsey.

“Home again, mother, and hungry for my supper.”

“Supper, indeed! Breakin’ my heart with your run-about ways! and the hoorican’, with ever’thin’ ruined, ever’thin’! The master—— Where’s he, I know not. The great pine broken like a match; the coops, the cow-house, and Snowfoot—— Ah, me! Yet the little one talks of supper!”

Margot looked about her in astonishment, scarcely noticing the other’s words. The devastation of her beloved home was evident, even down on the open beach, and she dared not think what it might be further inland.

“Why, it must have been a cyclone! We were reading about them only yesterday and Uncle Hugh—did you say that you knew—where is he?”

Angelique shook her head.

“Can I tell anythin’, me? Into the storm he went and out of it he will come alive, as you have. If the good Lord wills,” she added reverently.

The girl sprang to the woman’s side, and caught her arm impatiently.

“Tell me, quick. Where is he? where did you last see him?”

“Goin’ into the hoorican’, with wood upon his shoulder. To make a beacon for you. So I guess. But you—tell how you come alive out of all that?” Sweeping her arm over the outlook.

Margot did not stop to answer but darted toward the point of rocks where, if anywhere, she knew her guardian would have tried his signal fire. In a moment she found him.

“Angelique! Angelique! He’s here. Quick—quick—— He’s—— Oh! is he dead, is he dead?”

There was both French and Indian blood in mother Ricord’s veins, a passionate loyalty in her heart, and the suppleness of youth still in her spare frame. With a dash she was at the girl’s side and had thrust her away, to kneel herself and lift her master’s head from its hard pillow of rock.

With swift nervous motions she unfastened his coat and bent her ear to his breast.

“’Tis only a faint, maybe shock. In all the world was only Margot, and Margot was lost. Ugh! the hail. See, it is still here—look! water, and—yes, the tea! It was for you—— Ah!”

Her words ended with a sigh of satisfaction as a slight motion stirred the features into which she peered so earnestly, and she raised her master’s head a bit higher. Then his eyes slowly opened and the dazed look gradually gave place to a normal expression.

“Why, Margot! Angelique? What’s happened?”

“Oh! Uncle Hugh! are you hurt? are you ill? I found you here behind the rocks and Angelique says—but I wasn’t hurt at all. I wasn’t out in any storm, didn’t know there had been one, that is, worth minding, till I came home——”

“Like a ghost out of the lake. She was not even dead, not she. And she was singin’ fit to burst her throat while you were—well, maybe, not dead, yourself.”

At this juncture, Tom, the inquisitive, thrust his white head forward into the midst of the group and, in her relief from her first fear, Margot laughed aloud.

“Don’t, Tom! You’re one of the family, of course, and since none of the rest of us will die to please that broken mirror, you may have to! Especially, if there’s a new brood out——”

But here Angelique threw up her free hand with such a gesture of despair that Margot said no more, and her face sobered again, remembering that, even though they were all still alive, there might be suffering untold among her humbler woodland friends. Then, as Mr. Dutton rose, almost unaided, a fresh regret came:

“That there should be a cyclone, right here at home, and I not to see it! See! Look, uncle, look! You can trace its very path, just as we read. Away to the south there is no sign of it, nor on the northeast. It must have swept up to us out of the southeast and taken our island in its track. Oh! I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

The man rested his hand upon her shoulder and turned her gently homeward. His weakness had left him as it had come upon him, with a suddenness like that of the recent tempest. It was not the first seizure of the kind, which he had had, though neither of these others knew it; and the fact added a deeper gravity to his always thoughtful manner.

“I am most thankful that you were not here; but where could you have been to escape it?”

“All day in the long cave. To the very end of it I believe, and see! I found these. They are like the specimens you brought the other day. They must be some rich metal.”

“In the long cave, you? Alone? All day? Margot, Margot, is not the glass enough? but you must tempt worse luck by goin’ there!” cried Angelique, who had preceded the others on the path, but now faced about, trembling indignantly. What foolish creature was this who would pass a whole day in that haunted spot, in spite of the dreadful tales that had been told of it. “Pouf! But I wear out my poor brain, everlastin’ to study the charms will save you from evil, me. And yet——”

“You would do well to use some of your charms on Tom, yonder. He’s found an overturned coop and looks too happy to be out of mischief.”

The woman wheeled again and was off up the slope like a flash, where presently the king of birds was treated to the indignity of a sound boxing, which he resented with squawks and screeches, but not with talons, since under each foot he held the plump body of a fat chicken.

“Tom thinks a bird in the hand is worth a score of cuffs! and Angelique’s so determined to have somebody die—I hope it won’t be Tom. A pity, though, that harm should have happened to her own pets. Hark! What is that?”

“Some poor woodland creature in distress. The storm——”

“That’s no sound belonging to the forest. But it is—distress!”

They paused by the cabin door, left open by Angelique, and listened intently. She, too, had caught the alien sound, the faint, appealing halloo of a human voice—the rarest of all cries in that wilderness. Even the eagle’s screeches could not drown it, but she had had enough of anxieties for one day. Let other people look out for themselves; her precious ones should not stir afield again, no, not for anything. Let the evil bird devour the dead chickens, if he must, her place was in the cabin, and she rushed back down the slope, fairly forcing the others inward from the threshold where they hesitated.

“’Tis a loon. You should know that, I think, and that they’re always cryin’ fit to scare the dead. Come. The supper’s waited this long time.”

With a smile that disarmed offense Margot caught the woman’s shoulder and lightly swung her aside out of the way.

“Eat then, hungry one! I, too, am hungry, but—— Hark!”

The cry came again, prolonged, entreating, not to be confounded with that of any forest wilding.

“It’s from the north end of our own island!”

The master’s ear was not less keen than the girl’s, and both had the acuteness of an Indian’s, but his judgment was better.

“From the mainland, across the narrows.”

Neither delayed, as a mutual impulse sent them toward the shore, but again Angelique interposed.

“Thoughtless child, have you no sense? With the master just out of a faint that was nigh death itself! With nothin’ in his poor stomach since the mornin’ and your own as empty. Wait. Eat. Then chase loons, if you will.”

Mr. Dutton laughed, though he also frowned and cast a swift, anxious glance toward Margot. But she was intent upon nothing save answering that far-off cry.

“Which canoe, uncle?”

“Mine.”

The devoted servant made a last protest, and caught the girl’s arm as it pushed the light craft downward