CHAPTER XVI.

_THE RETURN OF GABRIEL._

"Sweet, sorrowing, mute, unplaining maidenhood."

As the coming of Frank Winslow to Pierre Island had been the cause of so many changes and important events in the lives of several individuals, so the period of his absence, on the contrary, was strangely quiet and uneventful. Pierre Island and its venerable inhabitant, seldom disturbed now by the signs of an outside world, felt the years pass away and realized no change.

Marie had been in New York for three years under the care of Miss Gaston. As all her winters for some time had been spent away from home, it was no unusual condition for her father.

Winslow had gone west immediately after his return to the States, so that when Miss Gaston reached the city he was many miles away. From the Rocky Mountains he had gone to the Klondike. During his stay in that region he had kept in touch with his friends in the East.

After the departure of the Americans, and particularly of Winslow, Len Lawson had changed considerably in demeanor, and when he learned that his rival was in a distant country he did not conceal his satisfaction in the least. He openly expressed it to Pierre. His manner otherwise was not so unpleasant, and but for the ever-haunting fear of the curse that would soon be upon him, his nature seemed to have undergone a change for the better. Pierre Island saw much of him, and had become a place of refuge, so to speak, when driven to a condition of despair. He was sure of the old man's protection and sympathy.

Frank Winslow found in a strange country, and amid the hardships and occupation peculiar to his mission there, an agreeable means of distraction from the serious thought resulting from the conditions which had lately involved his life. The blow he had received was a severe one, and had come suddenly and unexpectedly. In the toil and routine of his new life he set himself bravely to the task he had before him. There was a grievous wound to be healed, and his force of character turned him into such directions as tended to make him as quickly as possible grow into the new life that must now open to him. His previous active career had kept him remarkably free from woman's influence. Though but a young man, he had travelled a great deal, but with a strict adherence to the demands of his work, and so absorbed by it that he had been able to give it his undivided attention. Science had received his allegiance, to the exclusion of every other mistress.

After coming into intimate relations with Grace Gaston, and seeing in her those high qualities which pleased his manly heart, he was at once powerfully influenced. Everything tended to bring him more and more into a realization of her personality, and that made the result inevitable, so far as he was concerned. From their first meeting to their final parting he was affected. Such a feeling, whether love or friendship, is of a permanent character. He had interpreted it as meaning love. He had been powerfully moved by it. He had acted as the lover, and as the lover had at last come to her. As a result they both suffered, each in his and her own way, and were prevented in consequence from enjoying the full value which a friendship such as was possible to them would bestow. In the wilds of Alaska he felt the same powerful feelings which had moved him at Pierre Island. His experience gave it a different coloring in his life. There was no uncertainty in relation to it as regarded Grace Gaston. Time was needed to soften the effect of the disappointment upon his life, which had come through her. So he was glad that the work which he had in hand would require not a few years to accomplish.

Grace Gaston found in Marie the development of a womanhood of a pure and retiring nature. Her wonderfully sensitive heart demanded certain conditions to satisfy it. As she broke away from the ties of youth, a few years wrought great changes in her. She ever retained her shyness. A quiet retirement, except to those in whom she placed implicit faith, and a modesty which no state of her life could eradicate or alter, were ever the qualities to characterize her. In her everyday life she was strong of character and purpose. Warm of heart, and of firm hope, she grew to riper womanhood capable of any sacrifice for those of her intimate life. With her mental and moral growth was also the beauty of face and form which, never brilliant, was nevertheless of that high type which commands admiration and derives its strength from unaffected native loveliness. Her womanhood was of that pure quality seen only in the reposeful face and the half melancholy, languid relaxation of form utterly unconscious of itself.

To Grace Gaston every day that came found in her heart some hope for the change in the relations that existed between Winslow and her loved companion, Marie. It was the regret of her existence that through her unwitting action she had been the means of separating these two persons. She had come in the way of Marie's love. She had interrupted the course of events which she fully believed would have opened Winslow's heart to a strong attachment for the Acadian girl. For this act of hers she could never rest content with herself until she saw these two friends returned to each other, and the original state of affairs restored as she had found them when she had arrived at Pierre Island, or just before she had seen Winslow at Blomidon. Marie, she believed, was the real and true object of his life. She held to this idea as an intuition, and she had all faith in the ultimate result. She longed for the final restoration of the picture which she had rudely marred. Her own happiness depended on it. She read the force of Winslow's character. She knew the heart of Marie, and she knew the qualities which had endeared her to herself. In pursuance of this idea, and in acting for its end, she did not see or realize all the results of her efforts. While she exerted every womanly tact to make him understand what had taken place in Marie's life, and of the wonderful development in her personality, she failed to see the impression she made on Winslow's mind in regard to herself. He found her taking a higher and better place in his life than he had been able to give her at first. She rose steadily in his estimation, and though she knew it not, she often left with him all the pain and all the regrets which he suffered on learning the true state of her heart. As to Marie, she was the same to him as she was when he left Pierre Island. He could not change the picture of her in his mind. Shy, gentle, and in the first blush of womanhood, wonderfully beautiful, he remembered, and with a strange light in her eyes which he had seen but a few times,--this was the recollection of the daughter of his friend Pierre, and this only when he gave her a thought.

So Grace Gaston was true to her trust and faithful to the charge she had placed upon herself. No mother more seriously considered the training and culture of her daughter. She felt all the anxiety of her responsible task and looked to a certain result. On her faithful and intelligent arrangement and preparation depended the life happiness of two of her friends. And on the desired result hung the expiation of the blame she could not rid herself of.

"Marie, I am finishing my letter to Mr. Winslow. What is there from your father he would like to hear?"

"Père wrote to me that Len Lawson had lost a good deal of his money trying to improve the Blue Vein mine. It is not so good now, as the vein is very small, and the stone is not so fine. Len has had the water fever for some time, and between the two he is changing."

"I have told him that you think you cannot leave your father for so long a time again. He does not show any sign of decline, but as he is so old you think that you should not be away from him so much."

"Yes, and père hopes to see Mr. Winslow this year."

"I will tell him so. I think that we will see him this year."

"It is late for him to return from that country, is it not?"

"Yes, but he says that he will have to come south at once."

"Why does he return this year? He said that it would take him another year to complete his work."

"Yes, he wrote to me that he could not expect to come home before next summer."

"Grace, do you think that he is in bad health? It is a terrible country, even for strong men," asked Marie, looking inquiringly into the face of her friend.

"His last letter does not say why he is returning so soon."

"He must be sick, Grace. That dreadful country, and he has been working so hard."

"I fear he has overworked himself, Marie, and he is compelled to return this year, a year earlier than he first intended."

"If he is not well, my dear father may not see him, even if he returns."

"He would not spend the summer here, and he could not do better than to go to Pierre Island, even in the autumn." As she spoke she laid her hand on Marie's arm, and looked up into her face with a loving expression of countenance.

"I hope he will come," said Marie, without the slightest embarrassment of manner. A soft look came into her eyes as she spoke her thoughts and feelings.

So it was that Marie had in the matured strength of her womanhood unconsciously consecrated her life to her love. Not by deliberate purpose had she done so, but every act and thought of her life were in accord with it, and it was announced in them and dominated her being and controlled her actions. It was akin to worship, yet there was not the slightest element of encouragement in it, so far as she was concerned. She lived happily with her love, nevertheless the forgetfulness of herself, and the disposition on her part to set aside her life for the good of others did not permit her to dwell upon any expectation. She clung firmly to what she had, and lived her years as a precious possession.

In a few more weeks Marie was at home again at Pierre Island, among the rocks and bluffs of Minas Basin. What a loveliness was there in the warm reflections of the sky on the long, bare beaches at low tide. Out along the fringe of the flats she walked as a girl, seeing the beauty of things and places, and feeling the joy of life amid the scenes and objects which before had not so attracted her attention. Her ears were filled with glad sounds. They spoke of the long, lazy fall of the low-tide surf. It sighed through the salmon weir, and overhead soughed in the foliage of the stunted pines, and among the caves and coves of Pierre Island, echoed back with weird loudness from the face of the cliffs. How fresh and clean the breeze came, fanning her face, from the salt tides and briny pools of weed! Where the sand and finer stone had been laid step above step, showing each change of the tide, she walked along the last tide line and marked the gatherings of the sea laid upon the shore. It was all so delightfully real to her now, since she had been away from it so long, and had grown so far into a new life while away. Never before in her absence had she felt the same joy on her return. She was not given to idle dreaming, but she was living in a new life of fresh, maturer years, and she saw the world of her youth, her beautiful world, through the eyes of her love. It tinted everything. She had become a poet in fancy and perception, in the emotional intensity and expansion of her being. Her education and development gave her an intelligent appreciation of the higher poetic qualities of life around her now, and of her place in it. There was suggestion in it, rich thought, and her love crowned it all.

So Marie brought back to Pierre Island a quality she had never before known or seen in it. She did not realize that it came from herself, and that her changed personality had given of itself to every commonplace object. Nor did she know that the strange thrills which came to her in the play of light and color, of harmonious sound upon her sensibilities, were given life and received their peculiar character from the influences of her love and the expectation of the return of Winslow.

When Marie did think of the possibility of seeing Winslow at Pierre Island, a fear and trembling seized upon her heart at times, and she longed for the presence of her friend, Miss Gaston, the woman she loved as only a woman can love who has no near relative in the world but a father.

She learned from her father that Len Lawson, her old playmate of the beach, whom she had now to drive from her life, had been away for several weeks, consulting skilful specialists, and trying to get a remedy for his malady. The curse was upon him. Every passion and ambition of his former life was drowned in the awful fever of the old malediction. His love for Marie, his interest in his mine, and the wealth he had acquired, were forgotten in his efforts to get relief from the curse which was upon him day and night.

Not many days after coming home, while the novelty of it all was yet with her, she spent several hours at the bluff side of Pierre Island. She looked with a strange feeling of dread at the shelf in the cove from which Winslow had been rescued. Then she wandered on to the place where the Blue Vein lay under the mass of fallen rock. The opening had been enlarged, and there was every evidence of labor above where the tide reached. Otherwise there was nothing unusual in the appearance of the place. There had not been any labor done since Len had gone away, and the tide had washed out all the signs of human effort. Marie avoided the place with a kind of terror, as though the shadow of an impending fate was already over it. Finally the rising of the tide warned her that it was time for her return. Slowly she moved along the edge of the rising water, taking a delicate bit of seaweed to press, or examining a shell or mineral specimen. In this easy way she reached Bluff Castle at last.

Suddenly the attention of Marie was called to voices which came from the house. She stopped, and in a moment the color left her face, and, trembling, she sank upon a bench near the door. Her fear did not leave her. The sounds of familiar voices, one her father's, the other so well remembered, yet so changed, came to her with unnerving power. The hoped for, yet the unexpected, had occurred. She had never dwelt upon his coming, and of the possibility of being compelled to enter his presence unannounced, or with nothing to bring them together easily and naturally. He was near her, in her own home, yet she dared not enter. She had not the strength to rise and remove herself from the seat. Suddenly her courage returned, in the words which came to her from within. Her strength asserted itself and she was no longer afraid. She had pictured to herself the stalwart, strong Winslow of three years past, but the words that came to her now told the story, and aroused the woman in her, the heart of sympathy for the man she loved.

"Friend Pierre, it is good to feel the air here. It will mean life and strength to me soon. But for you I would never have climbed Island Road. It seems impossible that I have lost so much."

Marie, aroused all at once, did not see as she heard the words thus spoken, a pale, emaciated man, changed out of almost every semblance of his former athletic self, lying back in an easy chair. Only the firm voice and fine, honest eyes told the Winslow, but fallen so low.

In a moment she was the woman again, equal to him in the purpose of her obedient and sympathetic heart. She felt that he needed her, and then she entered. Gabriel had been found.