Part 1

Chapter 14,166 wordsPublic domain

A FURNACE OF EARTH

HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES

_Author of “Smoking Flax,” etc._

As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

--DAVID.

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

TO R. W.

_Their first estate of joy they leave, So pure, impassioned and elate, And learn from Piety to grieve Because their hearts are passionate._

--The Revelation of St. Love the Divine.

THE ELEMENTS.

EARTH, AIR AND WATER.

Along the wavering path which followed the twisting summit of the cliffs toiled a little figure. His face was tanned, and from under a brown tangle of hair looked eyes blue and fearless.

He had walked a mile, and home lay a mile further, where white-painted cottages glowed against the close green velvet of the hills. The way ran staggeringly, and the boy was tired.

A group of ragged children tossed up their caps and shouted from the cluster of fishermen’s huts set further back from the sea; he did not heed them, but seated himself on the tufted panic-grass and turned his eyes seaward. The hot sun slanted silver-bright flashes from the moody water, and whistling swallows, beyond the cliff-edge, soared and dropped against the blue of the sky, like black balls from a juggler’s hands. A light breeze, lifting, ruffled with a million ripples the gray surge, played along the path in scurrying dust-whorls and cooled his hot cheeks.

On its heels came stealthily a yellowish dimness; a sullen bank of cloud crept swiftly along the northern horizon. From a thin, black line, it grew to a pall, rising ominous and threatening. Quick flashes pricked its jagged edge. Beneath it the sea turned to a weight of liquid lead.

The boy Richard rose fascinated, his eyes upon the advancing squall, his ears open to the rising breathing of the waves, troubled by under-dreams. His lips were parted eagerly, and his browned hands clutched at the brim of his hat. Often and often, from his window, he had seen the power of the storm; now its near and intimate presence throbbed through him.

The foremost gust struck him with sudden fury, turning him about as though with strong hands upon his shoulders, and tearing his hat from his grasp. He caught his breath with a sense of outraged dignity; then, bending his head resolutely to the onslaught, he stumbled forward. The air was full of scudding mist-streaks, and twisted roots caught at his feet in the half-darkness. The fierce wind tore with its claws at the little jacket, buttoned bravely, and tossed the damp, rebellious hair. The fishermen’s huts lay just behind him, a dry and beckoning shelter; before him, for a few paces, stretched the path leading into ghostly obscurity. The boy bent low, bracing his legs doggedly against the stubble, and foot by foot went on along that lone mile into the storm.

On a sudden the blurred sea-view was swallowed up. The wind swooped, grasping at his ankles. It picked up pebbles and flung them, howling, against his body. They stung like heavy hail. It snapped off unwilling twigs from the cringing bushes and dashed them into the childish face. But he did not retreat. What was the wind that it should force him back! A mighty determination was in his little soul. His teeth were tight clenched, and his legs ached with the strain. The blast caught away his breath and he turned his back to it. At the moment it seemed to lull, tempting him to go its way, but he would not yield.

Then the tempest gathered all its forces and hurled them spitefully, hatefully against him, barring, lashing him cruelly, thrusting him backward. He dropped upon his knees in the path, giving not an inch. The wind, sopped with heavy rain, fell upon him bodily. He stretched himself flat, winding his fingers among the roots of the wiry grasses, struck down, bruised, but still unconquered.

A lone, pied gull, careening sidelong through the wind-rifts, roused in him a helpless frenzy of anger and resentment. He clenched his tiny fist and shook it at the sky, choking, gasping, sobbing, great tears of impotent rage and mortification blown across his cheeks.

FIRE.

The red-gold of the sun still warmed the late summer dusk. The fading light sifted between the curtains of the window and touched lovingly the checkered coverlid, moulding into soft outline the rounded little limbs beneath. The long hair spread goldenly across the pillow, and the wide brown eyes were open.

Old Anne was going to die--old Anne with the ugly wrinkled face and bony fingers from which all the children ran. She was going to die that night. Margaret had heard it whispered among the servants. That very same night while she herself was asleep in bed! Her soul was going to leave her body and fly up to God.

She wondered how it would look, but she knew it would be very beautiful. Its back would not be bent, nor its face drawn with shining burn-scars. It would be young and straight, and it would have wings--long, white wings, such as the angels had in the big stained-glass window over the choir-box in the chapel. It would have a ring of light around its head, such as the moon had on misty evenings. It would go just at the moment when old Anne died, and those who watched close enough might see. Would it speak? Or would it go so swiftly that it could only smile for a good-by? She wondered if its eyes would be kindly and blue, not dim and watery as Anne’s had been. Her own face was smoother and prettier than Anne’s, but her eyes were dark. Angels always had blue eyes. Its face would be turned up toward heaven, where it was going, and its wings would make a soft, whispering sound, like a pigeon’s when it starts to fly. One would have to be very quick, but if one were there at just the right minute, one could see it.

Oh, if _she_ only could! She felt quite sure she would not be afraid of Anne then, knowing that she was just going to be an angel! If they would only let her! She was so little, and they would be watching, so that maybe they would not notice her. Perhaps she could slip in quietly on tiptoe, and then she would see a real shining soul, such as she herself had inside of her, and which she loved to imagine sometimes looked out of her eyes at her from the looking-glass. A breathless eagerness seized her, and she sat up in the bed, hugging her knees and resting her chin upon them.

She listened a moment; the house was very still. Then she threw down the covers, and jumped in her bare feet to the floor. She sat down on the rug in her white nightgown, and pulled on her stockings with nervous haste, and her shoes, leaving them unbuttoned and flapping. Then she slipped into her muslin dress, fastening it behind at the neck and waist, and opened the door, tugging at the big brass knob, and quaking at its complaining creaks. No one was in sight, and the little figure, with its bright floating hair and rosy skin showing between its shoulders like a belated locust, stole fearfully down the dim stairway, along the deserted hall, and sidling through the half-opened door, stepped out among the long-fingered glooms of the standing shrubbery.

She hesitated a moment, frightened at the outdoor dark, and then, catching her breath, ran quickly around the corner of the house, and down the drive toward the low, clapboarded structure beside the stables, where a lighted window-shade with moving shadows pointed out the room of that solemn presence.

The night air was warm and heavy, and its door stood wide. She crept up close and listened. Between low-muttered words of subdued conversation, she heard a slow and labored breathing--a breathing now stopping, now beginning again, and with a curious rattle in it which somehow awed her. From where she crouched, she could see only the foot of the bed, with its tall, bare posts. There seemed to be expectancy in the hushed voices within, and a quick fear seized her lest she should miss the wonderful sight. Quivering with eagerness, she rose to her feet, and with her fascinated gaze seeking out the old face on the pillow, stepped straight forward into the room.

She heard a rising murmur of astonishment, of protest, and before her light-blinded eyes had found their way, felt herself seized roughly, unceremoniously, lifted bodily off her feet and borne out into the night. She heard, through the passionate resentment of her childish mind, the soothing endearments of Jem the gardener, and she struggled to loose herself, beating at his face with her hands and sobbing with helpless suffocation of anger.

A frightened maid met them at the door and took her from him, carrying her to her room to undress her and sit by her till she should fall asleep. No assurance that old Anne would soon be happy in heaven comforted her. No one understood, and she was too hurt to explain what she had wanted.

So she lay through the long hours, the bitter tears of grief and disappointment wetting her pillow.

The air above the shelving stretches of sand-beach shimmered and dilated with the heat of the August afternoon, as Margaret walked just beyond the yeasty edge of the receding waves. There was little wind stirring, and the cool damp was pleasant under her feet. She had left the hotel behind, and the straggling line of bobbing, dark-blue specks, which indicated the habitual bathers, was small in the distance.

A blue-and-silver bound book was in her hand, and her gray tweed skirt and soft jacket, with a bunch of drooping crimson roses at the waist, made a grateful spot upon the white glare. Summer sun and sea-wind had given a clear olive to her face and a scarlet radiance to her full lips, softly curved. Her hair, in waving masses of flush-brown, flowed out from beneath her straw hat, tempting a breeze.

To her left were tumbled monotonous, low dunes, and beyond them the torn clayey bank, gashed by storms; to her right, only barren stretch of sea and sweep of sky.

At a bight of the shore, under the long, curved hole of a pine, leaning to its fall from the high bank through which half its naked roots struck sprangling, ran a zigzag footpath to a little grove, where hemlock and stunted oak grew thickly. Up she climbed, poising lightly, and drawing herself to the last step by grasping a sprawling creeper. The green coolness refreshed her, and there was more movement in the higher air.

She followed the twists of the path among the low bushes clustering in front of a sparse clearing. Facing her, in the edge of the shade, where the light fell in mottled shadows upon a soft, springy floor of dead pine needles, with its wide arms laced in the rasping boughs of the scrub-oaks around it, stood an unwieldy wooden cross, hewed roughly, its base socketed in stone and its horizontal bar held in place by a rust-red bolt. A cracked and crazy bench, also hewn, was set beneath, and just above this was nailed a heavy board in which was deeply cut this half-effaced inscription:

Here Lies The Body of an Unknown Woman Drowned In the Wreck of the Schooner Bartlett, May 9, 1871.

and below it, in larger characters, now almost obliterated by gray-and-yellow stains:

Ora Pro Anima Sua.

This was Margaret’s favorite spot. She preferred its melancholy solitude to the vivacious companionship of the cottage piazza, and its quiet tones to the bizarre hues of the beach pavilion. It lay removed from the usual paths, reached only by a wide detour, across bush-tangled wastes or the long, uncomfortable walk up-shore on the hot, yielding sand. Now she sank upon the seat with a deep sigh of pleasure, letting her book fall open in her lap. Her eyes roved far off across the gray-green heave where a buccaneering fish-hawk slanted craftily.

A deeper light was in them as they fell upon the open printed leaf:

“For Love is fine and tense as silver wire, Fierce as white lightning, glorious as drums And beautiful as snow-mountains. Swift she is As leaping flame and calm as winter stars.”

Its chaste beauty had long ago stamped the passage upon her memory; to-day the lines hymned themselves to a subtle, splendid music.

Tossing the volume suddenly to one side, her hands loosed her belt. She held the limp band movelessly a moment, and then bent her face eagerly over it. Under her fingers the filigree of the clasp slid back, disclosing a portrait. It was that of a man, young, resolute-faced, with brown, wavy hair parted in the middle, and candid forehead. It was rugged and masterful, but with a sweetness of lips and a tender, gray softness of proud eyes that bespoke him not more a doer than a dreamer.

As she looked, her lips parted and a faint color crept up her neck, showing brightly against the auburn hollows of her hair. She fondled and petted the ivory with her hands, and then raised it to her lips, kissing it, murmuring to it, and folding it over and over in the warm moistness of her breath.

Holding it against her face, she walked up and down the open space with quick, pushing steps, her free hand stripping the leaves from the sweeping bush fronds, her hat fallen back, swaying from the knotted streamers caught under the slipping coil between her shoulders. Stopping at length in front of the bench, she hung the belt upon a corner of the carven board, its violet weave tinging the weathered grain and the painted circlet glowing like a jewelled period for the massive lettering.

With one knee on the warped seat, she read again the fading sentences.

“An unknown woman.” Gone down into the cold green depths! Perhaps with a dear, glowing secret in her heart, a one name bubbling from her lips, a new quivering something in her soul, which the waters could not still! That body buffeted and tossed by rearing breakers, to lie nameless in a neglected grave; that soul, its earthly longing forgotten, to go forever unregretful of what it had cried for with all the might of its human passion!

Ah! but _did it_? If death touched her own soul to-day! “For love is strong as death. * * * Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it!” In imagination she felt the numbing clasp of the dragging under-deeps; she saw her soul wandering, wraith-like, through shadowless, silent spaces and across infinite distances. Would it bear with it a placid joy? Would it know no quicker heart-beat, no tears that reddened the eyelid, no tender thrill in all its lucent veins? Would nothing, nothing of that strange, sweet wildness that ran imprisoned in all her blood cling to it still?

The thought bit her. She reached up and snatched down the belt, pressing the clasp tightly with her cheek in the curve of her shoulder, repeating dumbly to herself the pious “Ora pro anima sua” that stood before her eyes.

* * * * *

A far crackling struck across her mood, and hastily drawing the belt about her waist, she leaned sideways from the upright beam, raising her hand quickly, as if to put back the lawless meshes of her hair. She heard the sound of a confident step, crunching on the marly sand, and the swish of bent-back bushes. It was coming in a direct line toward her. There was a dry clatter of falling fence-rails, as though the intruder, disdaining obstacles, preferred to walk through them.

She caught a glimpse of a familiar, bright-colored scarf between the glimmering, leafy tangles, and then the thrust of a quick spring, and an instant later the figure that had vaulted the heavy fence came dropping, feet foremost, through the snapping screen of brambles, and walked straight toward the spot where she had risen to her feet with a little glad cry.

II.

“Give me your hand,” he said peremptorily. They were on a pebbly spur of the descending path, and Daunt had leaped down below her. As she stretched it out to him, he drew it sharply toward him. She felt herself grasped firmly in his arms, swung off and lifted to the smooth level beneath. She could feel his uneven breaths stirring in the roots of her hair, and his wrists straining. Her head fell against his shoulder and her look met his, startled. His sunburned face was pale, and his gray eyes were hazed with a daring softness.

Then, as she lay passive in his arms, a fiery longing grew swiftly in them, and he suddenly bent his head and kissed her--again and again. She felt her unused mouth moulding to answering kisses beneath his own, and her cheeks rushing into a flame. Through her closed lids the sun hung like a rosy mist of woven sparkles.

“I love you!--_you!_--_you!_” he said, stammering and hoarsely. “I _love_ you!”

The tumbling passion of the utterance pierced through her like a spear of desperate gladness. Every nerve reached and quivered, tendril-like. His deep breathing, toned with the dripping lap of the shingle seemed to throb through her. She lay quiet, breathless, her lashes drooped, her very skin tense under the lasting burn of his lips.

“Margaret! Ardee, dear! Look at me!”

Her eyes flowed into his. From a blur under cloud-pale eyelids, they had turned to violet balls, shot through with a trembling light. The look she gave him melted over him in a rage of love. Desire bordered it, a smile dipped in it, promise made it golden, and he saw his own longing painted in it as a pilgrim sees his reflection in a slumbering pool.

She clasped her hands on his head, pushing back his cloth cap, and framing his face in the long, sweeping oval of her arms. He could feel little vibrant thrills in her fingers. He held her tightly, masterfully, first at arm’s length, laughing into her wide eyes, and then close, folding her, pressing her hair with his hands.

The leaves from the roses she wore fell in splotches of deep red, sprinkling the brown-veined sand at their feet; the dense, bruised odor, mixed with the salty breath of seaweed, seemed to fill and choke all her swaying senses.

“It is like a storm!” she said. “I have dreamed of it coming at the last gently, like a bright morning, but it isn’t like that! It seemed as if that were the way it would come to me--like a still, small voice--but it isn’t! It’s the wind and the earthquake and the fire! Oh!” she said, drawing her breath in a long, shuddering inhalation. “Do you smell that rose-scent? Did ever any roses smell like that? They--they make me dizzy! Feel me tremble.”

Every pulsation of her frame ran through him with a swift, delicious sensation, like the touching of rough velvet. Her curling hair, where it sprang against his neck, ridged his skin with a creeping delight.

“Do you know,” he said, “you are like a great, tall, yellow lily. Some gnome has drawn amber streaks in your hair--it shines like a gold-stone--and rubbed your cheeks with a pink tulip leaf! And your lips are like--no, they are like nothing but ripe strawberries! Nobody could ever describe your eyes; they are most like a bed of purple violets set in a brown cloud with the sun shining through it. Tell me!” he said suddenly. “Do you love me? Do you? Do you?”

“Yes! yes! yes! Oh,” she breathed, “what is there in your hands? I want them to touch me!”

He passed his palms lightly along the bow-like curve of her cheek.

“It is like fire and flowers and music,” she said, “all rolled into one. And those roses! They are attar. The sand looks as if it were bleeding!”

“Shall you think of me when I am on the train to-night?”

“All the time--every minute!”

“And to-morrow, while I am in the city?”

“Yes!”

“And Monday?”

“Then you will come back to me!”

He strained her to him in the white sunlight, and kissed her again, on the lips and forehead and hands, and she clung to him, lifting her face to him eagerly and passionately.

* * * * *

Margaret stood watching the firm-knit figure as it crossed the sand space. She saw the lift of his lithe shoulders as he pulled himself up the bank, saw his form splashed against the sky, saw the flutter of his handkerchief as he flung her a last signal.

She waved her hand in return, and he disappeared.

Then she ran to a slant spile rising lonely from the sand, and sank down quivering. It seemed to her as if she could bear no more joy; her body ached with it. She threw up her hands and laughed aloud in sheer ecstasy.

Then she remembered that she had left her book in the grove, and she stumbled up and walked back slowly, smiling and humming an air as she went along.

The first shade of the dimming afternoon lay under the trees as she climbed again to the little clearing, and the sunbeams glanced obliquely from the crooked oak branches. The air was very still and freighted only with the soft swish of the ebb-tide and the clean fragrance of balsam. Her book lay open and face down on the plank seat. She picked it up and sat down, leaning back.

She was still humming, low-voiced, and as she sat she began to sing--not strongly, but hushed, as though for a drowsy ear--with her face lifted and her dreamy eyes upon the sea margin.

“Purple flower and soaring lark, Throbbing song and story bold, All must pass into the dark, Die and mingle with the mold. Ah, but still your face I see! Bend and clasp me; Sweet, kiss me!”

It was Daunt’s song, the one he most loved to hear her sing. But to-day it had a new, rich meaning. She stretched her hands on either side, grasping the seat, and sang on to the bending boughs, rubbing slowly against the weather-stained beam arms above her head:

“Dear, to-day shall never rust! What, are we to be o’erwise? All that doth not smell of dust Lieth in your lips and eyes. So, while loving yet may be, Bend and fold me; Sweet, kiss me!”

The shade grew darker as she sat. It deepened the brown of her eyes and the sea-bloom in her cheeks, and the loitering lilac of the west touched the coils of her hair, as they lay against the gray board, blotting with their living bronze the half-effaced, forgotten inscription:

_Pray for Her Soul._

III.

In the pause before the service began, Margaret’s eyes drifted aimlessly about the dim body of the small but pretentious seaside chapel. It held the same incongruous gathering so often to be seen at coast resorts, a mingling of ultra-fashionable summer visitors, and homely and uncomfortably well-dressed village folk. There was Mrs. Atherton, whose bounty had elevated the parish from a threadbare existence, with simple service and plain altar furniture, to a devout adherence to High Church methods, with candles and rich vestments, and a never-failing welcome for stylish visiting clergymen from the city; there was the wife of the proprietor of the Beach Hotel, whose costumes were always faithful second editions of Mrs. Atherton’s; there were the rector’s two daughters and the usual sprinkling of familiar faces that she had passed on the drive or the beach walk.

The lawn outside was shimmering with the heat that had followed an over-night shower, and the pewed calm oppressed her. Her limbs were nettled with teasing pricks of restlessness.

The open windows let in a heavy, drenched rose-odor, tinged with a distant salt smell of sea. The air was weighted with it--it was the same mingled odor that had filled her nostrils when she stood with Daunt on the shore, with the wet wind in their faces and fluttering petals of the crushed roses she had worn staining the dun sand and crisp, strown seaweed like great drops of blood. It overpowered her senses. She breathed it deeply, feeling a delicious intoxication, and its suggested memory ran through her veins like an ethereal ichor, tingling to her finger ends.

Her eyes, heavy and swimming, were full of the iridescent colors of the stained-glass window opposite, with the dull yellow aureole about the head of the central figure. The hues wove and blended in a background of subdued harmony, lending life and seeming movement to the features.