Part 3

She set the candle on the chimney. It showed her rock-built domicile, plain but dignified, like the hollow of a cavern, with blue china on the cupboard shelves and a spinning-wheel standing by the north wall. A corner staircase led to the second story of the tower, and on its lowest step the fugitive dropped down, weeping and panting. She was peculiarly dressed in the calico bloomers which the King of Beaver had latterly decreed for the women of his kingdom. Her trim legs and little feet, cased in strong shoes, appeared below the baggy trousers. The upper part of her person, her almond eyes, round curves and features were full of Oriental suggestions. Some sweet inmate of a harem might so have materialized, bruising her softness against the hard stair.

“Why, Rosanne Baker!” her hostess reiterated.

Cecilia did not wear bloomers. She stood erect in petticoats. “I thought you went on one of the boats!”

“I didn't,” sobbed Rosanne. “When they were crowding us on I slipped among the lumber piles and hid. I've been hid all day, lying flat between boards--on top where they couldn't see me.”

“Suppose the lumber had been set on fire, too! And you haven't had anything to eat?”

“I don't want to eat. I'm only frightened to death at the wicked Gentiles burning the island. I couldn't stay there all night, so I got down and ran to your house.”

“Of course, you poor child! But, Rosanne, where's your husband?”

The trembling creature stiffened herself and looked at Cecilia out of the corners of her long eyes. “He's with Elizabeth Aiken.”

The only wife of one husband did not know how to take hold of this subject.

“But your father was there,” she suggested. “How could you leave your father and run the risk of never seeing him again?”

“I don't care if I never see him again. He said he was so discouraged he didn't care what became of any of us.”

Cecilia was going to plead the cause of domestic affection further, but she saw that four step-mothers could easily be given up. She turned helplessly to her husband who stood in the door.

“Poor thing! Ludlow, what in the world shall we do?”

“Put her to bed.”

“Of course, Ludlow. But will anybody hurt you to-morrow?”

“There are two good guns on the rack over the chimney. I don't think anybody will hurt me or her either, to-morrow.”

“Rosanne, my dear,” said Cecilia, trying to lift the relaxed soft body and to open the stairway door behind her. “Come up with me right off. I think you better be where people cannot look in at us.”

Rosanne yielded and stumbled to her feet, clinging to her friend. When they disappeared the young man heard her through the stairway enclosure sobbing with convulsive gasps:

“I hate Elizabeth Aiken! I wish they would kill Elizabeth Aiken! I hate her--I hate her!”

The lighthouse-keeper sat down again on his doorstep and faced the prospect of taking care of a homeless Mormon. It appeared to him that his wife had not warmly enough welcomed her or met the situation with that recklessness one needed on Beaver Island. The tabernacle began to burn lower, brands streaming away in the current which a fire makes. It was strange to be more conscious of inland doings than of that vast unsalted sea so near him, which moistened his hair with vaporous drifts through the darkness. The garnet redness of the temple shed a huger amphitheatre of shine around itself. A taste of acrid smoke was on his lips. He was considering that drunken fishermen might presently begin to rove, and he would be wiser to go in and shut the house and put out his candle, when by stealthy approaches around the lighthouse two persons stood before him.

“Is Ludlow here?” inquired a voice which he knew.

“I'm here, Jim! Are all the Mormons coming back?”

“Is Rosanne in your house?”

“Rosanne is here; up-stairs with Cecilia. Come inside, Jim. Have you Elizabeth with you?”

“Yes, I have Elizabeth with me.”

The three entered together. Ludlow shut the door and dropped an iron bar across it. The young men standing opposite were of nearly the same age; but one was fearless and free and the other harassed and haggard. Out-door labor and the skill of the fisheries had given to both depth of chest and clean, muscular limbs. But James Baker had the desperate and hunted look of a fugitive from justice. He was fair, of the strong-featured, blue-eyed type that has pale chestnut-colored hair clinging close to a well-domed head.

“Yes, Rosanne is here,” Ludlow repeated. “Now will you tell me how you got here?”

“I rowed back in a boat.”

“Who let you have a boat?”

“There were sailors on the steamer. After I found Rosanne was left behind I would have had a boat or killed the man that prevented me. I had to wait out on the lake until it got dark. I knew your wife would take care of her. I told myself that when I couldn't find any chance to land in St. James's Bay until sunset.”

“She's been hiding in the lumber on the dock all day.”

“Did any one hurt her?”

“Evidently not.”

The Mormon husband's face cleared with a convulsion which in woman would have been a relieving burst of tears.

“Sit down, Elizabeth,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “You look fit to fall.”

“Yes, sit down, Elizabeth,” James Baker repeated, turning to her with secondary interest. But she remained standing, a tall Greek figure in bloomers, so sure of pose that drapery or its lack was an accident of which the eye took no account. She had pushed her soft brown hair, dampened by the lake, behind her ears. They showed delicately against the two shining masses. Her forehead and chin were of noble and courageous shape. If there was fault, it was in the breadth and height of brows masterful rather than feminine. She had not one delicious sensuous charm to lure man. Her large eyes were blotted with a hopeless blankness. She waited to see what would be done next.

“Now I'll tell you,” said Baker to his friend, with decision, “I'm not going to bring the howling Gentiles around you.”

“I don't care whether they come or not.”

“I know you don't. It isn't necessary in such a time as this for you and me to look back.”

“I told you at the time I wouldn't forget it, Jim. You stood by me when I married Cecilia in the teeth of the Mormons, and I'll stand by you through any mob of Gentiles. My sail-boat's out yonder, and it's yours as long as you want it; and we'll provision it.”

“That's what I was going to ask, Ludlow.”

“If I were you I'd put for Green Bay. Old neighbors are there, my father among them.”

“That was my plan!”

“But,” Ludlow added, turning his thumb over his shoulder with embarrassment, “they're all Gentiles in Green Bay.”

“Elizabeth and I talked it over in the boat. I told her the truth before God. We've agreed to live apart. Ludlow, I never wanted any wife but Rosanne, and I don't want any wife but Rosanne now. You don't know how it happened; I was first of the young men called on to set an example. Brother Strang could bring a pressure to bear that it was impossible to resist. He might have threatened till doomsday. But I don't know what he did with me. I told him it wasn't treating Elizabeth fair. Still, I married her according to Saints' law, and I consider myself bound by my pledge to provide for her. She's a good girl. She has no one to look to but me. And I'm not going to turn her off to shift for herself if the whole United States musters against me.”

“Now you talk like a man. I think better of you than I have for a couple of weeks past.”

“It ought to make me mad to be run off of Beaver. But I couldn't take any interest. May I see Rosanne?”

“Go right up-stairs. Cecilia took her up to put her to bed. The walls and floors are thick here or she would have heard your voice.”

“Poor little Rosanne! It's been a hard day for her.”

The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as you can give me a few things to make the women comfortable for the run to Green Bay, I'll take them and put out.”

“Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what they need.”

Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most tenderly the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted on a braided rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet and remarked:

“It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have fair weather.”

“I think we are,” she answered.

Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of the windows.

At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.

Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his weapons.

“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said to the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They'll kill you, and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer. I'm going to open this window.”

A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a way through the window.

“Get off of the flower-bed,” said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his gun on the sill. “You're tramping down my wife's flowers.”

“It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We seen them shlipping in here!”

“It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own da-cent wife that hard to come at, by raison of King Strang!”

“Augh! thim bloomers!--they do be makin' me sthummick sick!”

“What hurts you worst,” said Ludlow, “is the price you had to pay the Mormons for fish barrels.”

The mob groaned and hooted. “Wull ye give us out the divil forninst there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?”

“I haven't any devil in the house.”

“It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women.”

“Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the women.”

“He'll not lave it alive.”

“You, Pat Corrigan,” said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the torch-bearer, “do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in to the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?”

“Do I moind it? I do!”

“Did I let the Mormons take you then?”

“No, bedad.”

“When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to arrest you, didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?”

“You did, bedad!”

“I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to you. They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver.”

“But the two wives of him,” argued Pat Corrigan.

“How many wives and children have you?”

“Is it 'how many wives,' says the hay then! Wan wife, by the powers; and tin childer.”

“Haven't you about as large a family as you can take care of?”

“Begobs, I have.”

“Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for her? Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it yourself.”

“No, bedad!”

“Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him alone. I don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?”

The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil for good.

“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to his confederates.

“There's no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You're not making a war on women.”

“We're not. Thrue for you.”

“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you get more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You've done about all you can on Mount Pisgah.”

As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.

“I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes on Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the sand-hills. We'd better load the boat right off, Jim.”

In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth waiting at the foot. They could see each other only by starlight. They were alone, for the others had gone out to the boat.

“Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?” spoke Elizabeth. Her sweet voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. “James says he'll build me a little house in your yard.”

“Oh, Elizabeth!”

Rosanne did not cry, “I cannot hate you!” but she threw herself into the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no longer as a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth kissed her husband's wife as a little sister.

The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind Elizabeth like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after the others to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the indignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal rights were not even recognized by the society into which she would be forced. The world was not open to her as to a man. In that day it would have stoned her if she ventured too far from some protected fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who could tramp winter snows and were not despised for their brief marriages may have flashed through Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man lighted around his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in all the swarming centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature with such genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown away?

Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal she walked in the footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.

“Take care, Rosanne. Don't stumble, darling!” said the man to whom Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a higher law unhus-banded her.

Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal without touching him as he lurched over a rock.

He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind formality to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.

“Well, bon voyage,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Mind you run up the lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don't think there'll be any chase. The Irish have freed their minds.”

“I'll send your fishing-boat back as soon as I can, Ludlow.”

“Turn it over to father; he'll see to it. Give him news of us and our love to all the folks. He will be anxious to know the truth about Beaver.”

“Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne!”

“Good-bye, Cecilia!”

A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of adjusted oars and the rush of water on each side of a boat's course, marked the fugitives' progress towards the anchored smack.

Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and watching the smoke of her past go up from a looted island, Elizabeth had the sense of a great company around her. The uninstructed girl from the little kingdom of Beaver divined a worldful of souls waiting and loving in hopeless silence and marching resistlessly as the stars to their reward. For there is a development like the unfolding of a god for those who suffer in strength and overcome.