Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

II. FORBIDDEN FRUIT

In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.

He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.

Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried helplessly long after I woke."

Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the grasp of emotion.

When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there. She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew. Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.

He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in, dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the tent.

He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of Louis Satanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman was a beautiful, versatile fellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like an angel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touch up his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm, marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sun and wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamed equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a flower,—if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful nerve of manliness.

Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on the island, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam rose early and trolled for lunge in deep water under the cliff. In the afternoon they all plunged into the lake, Eva swimming like a cardinal-flower afloat. Adam was careful to keep near her, and finally to help her into the boat, where she sat with her scarlet bathing-dress shining in the sun and her drenched hair curling in an arch around her face.

All these days flashed before Adam while he put a slow foot out on the tent-rug.

There was nobody about the camp when he had made his morning toilet and unclosed the tent-flaps, so he built a fire in the stove, hung the bedding to sun, and set out the cots. A blueness which was not humid filtered itself through the air everywhere, and fold upon fold of it seemed rising from invisible censers on the mainland.

Eva hailed him from the lake. She came rowing across the sun's track. The water was fresh and blue, glittering like millions of alternately dull and burnished scales.

Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with more reticence than usual.

"You don't know where I have been, laddie," exclaimed Eva. "Look at all the fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket sagged down with gold-streaked quartz. I went around to the other side of the island, where the counterfeiters' hole is, to look into it while the morning sun on the lake threw a reflection."

"There's nothing wonderful to be seen there."

"How will we know that? The rocks sound hollow all about, and there may be a great cavern full of counterfeiters' relics. Oh, Adam, I saw Louis Satanette's sail!"

"He comes early this morn."

"I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore. He says we'll explore the counterfeiters' hole, and let us go directly after breakfast."

"What is it worth the exploring?" said Adam. "Four rocks set on end, and you crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back out again. It's but a burrow, and ends against the hill's heart of rock. I've to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk."

The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting and sifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray. As if there was not enough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the foot of the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water. He looked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish or two glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook dropped in as his excuse for loitering.

The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.

Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the earth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at their summit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.

The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from his listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws in the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all in white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant exhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past Adam.

"What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.

"Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."

"You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using the double Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."

Adam thought of her when she was not on the lookout. He also thought of her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as he pulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.

"I'll go in presently," he muttered.

"Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving the upward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks a repetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.

"I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."

"Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too close to the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke has overcome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"

"The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting his position impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graat dail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."

Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:

"Well, au revoir. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. It will be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not wind enough to lift it."

"Good-day to ye," responded Adam. "We'll likely shift camp before you're this way."

"In so short a time?" exclaimed Louis.

"In so lang a time. I'm soul-sick of it. It's lone; it's heavy. The fine's too great for the pleasure of the feight. Look, now,—there were two rough laddies up Glazka way, in my country, and they came to fists aboot a sweethairt, the fools. But when they are stripped and ready, one hits the table wi's hond, and says he, 'Ay, Georgie, I'm wullin' to feight ye, but wha's goin' to pay the fine?'"

Louis Satanette laughed again, but as if he did not know just what was meant."

"It's a cautious mon, is the Scotchmon," said Adam, "but no' so slow, after all."

"Oh, never slow!" said Louis. "Very, very fast indeed, to leave this paradise in the midst of the summer."

"'Farewell to lovely Loch Achray,'" sighed Adam:

Louis made a sign of adieu and dipped his oars.

"It's only au revoir," said he, shooting past. "Be very, very far from parting with Magog too early."

"'So lone a lake, so sweet a strand,'" repeated Adam, dropping his head back against the stern.

He did not move while the sound of the other's oars died away behind him. He did not move while the afternoon shadows spread far over the water.

The long Canadian twilight advanced stage by stage. First, all Magog flushed, as if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine. Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endless succession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainland mountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, with slow and irregular strokes, Adam pulled away from the cliff, and brought his keel to grate the sand in front of his tent.

Eva was sitting there on a rock, huddling a shawl around her.

"Oh, Adam Macgregor!" she began, in a low voice, "and do you condescend to bring your wraith back to me at last?"

"It's nothing but my wraith," said Adam, lifting his eggs and butter and milk, and stepping from the boat. "The mon in me died aboot noon."

Eva walked along by his side to the cool-box, where he deposited his load.

"What is the matter with you, laddie, that you look and talk so strangely?"

"Oh, naught," said Adam, turning and facing her. "I but saw you kissing Louis Satanette on the hill to-day."

III. THE FLAMING SWORD

The changes which passed over her face were half concealed by the twilight. She was grieved, indignant, and frightened, but over all other expressions lurked the mischievous mirth of a bad child.

"I meant to tell you about it," she said.

"Hearken," said Adam, with a fierce stare. "I've stayed out on the lake all day, and I'm quiet. At first I wasn't. But when he came by I gave him nothing but a good word."

"I wish you'd scolded him instead of me," said Eva, propping her back against the table and puckering her lips.

"He did naught," said Adam, "but what any man would do that got lave. It's you that gave him lave that are to blame."

"Don't be so serious about a little thing," put forth Eva. "We just walked over to the counterfeiters' hole, and coming back we picked strawberries, and he teased me like a girl, and caught hold of me and kissed me. We've been such good friends in camp. I think it's this easy, wild life made me do it."

"She'll blame the very sky over her instead of taking blame to herself," ground out Adam from between his jaws. "I sat in me boat below and saw you arch your head and look at him ways that I remember. My God! why did you make this woman so false, and yet so sweet that a mon canna help loving her in spite o' his teeth?"

"Because I'd die if folks didn't love me," burst out Eva, with a sob. "And if men can't help loving me, what do you blame me for?"

"What right have you to breathe such a word when you're married to me?"

"But I'm not used to being married yet," pleaded Eva. "And I forgot, this once."

"It's once and for all," said Adam, "You'll never be to me what you were before. Is it the English-Canadian way to bring up women to kiss every comer?"

"I didn't kiss anybody but Louis Satanette," maintained Eva, "and I didn't really want to kiss him"

"Never mind," said Adam. "Don't trouble your butterfly soul about it." And he turned away and walked toward the tent.

"I'll not love you if you say such awful things to me," she flashed after him.

"Ye can't take the breeks off a Hielandman," he replied, facing about, "Ye never loved me. Not as I loved you. And it's no loss I've met, if I could but think it."

"Oh, Adam!" Now she ran forward and caught him around the waist. "Don't be so hard with me. I know I am very bad, but I didn't mean to be."

Some faint perception of that coarse fibre within her was breaking with horror through her face. She held to his hands after he had separated her from his person and held her off.

"All that you do still has its effect on me," said the man, gazing sternly at her. "I love ye; but I despise myself for loving ye. This morn I adored ye with reverence; this night you're as a bit o' that earth."

Eva let go his hands and sat down on the ground. As he made his preparations in the tent he could not help seeing with compassion how abjectly her figure drooped. All its flexible proud lines, were suddenly gone. She was dazed by his treatment and by the light in which he put her trifling. She sat motionless until Adam came out with one of the cots in his arms.

"I'm to sleep upon the hill in the pine woods to-night," said he. "Go into the tent, and I'll fasten the flaps. You shan't be scared by anything."

"Let me get in the boat and leave the island, if you can't breathe the same air with me," said Eva. staggering up.

"No, I can't breathe the same air with ye to-night, but ye'll go into the tent," said Adam, with authority.

"I'll not stay there," she rebelled. "I'll follow you. You don't know what may be on this island."

"There can be nothing worse than what I've seen," said Adam; "and that's done all the hairm it can do."

"Oh, Adam, are we both crazy?" the small creature burst out, weeping as if her heart would break. "Don't go away and leave me so. I am not real bad in my heart, I know I am not; and if you would be a little patient with me and help me, I shall get over my silly ways. There is something in me, you can depend upon, if I did do that foolish thing. And my mother didn't live long enough to train me, Adam; remember that. Won't you please kiss me? My heart is breaking."

He put down the cot and took her by the shoulders, trembling as he did so from head to foot:

"My wife, I belaive what you say. I'd give all the days remaining to me if I could strain ye against my breast with the feeling I had this morn. But there comes that sight. I never shall see the hill again, I never shall see a spot of this island again, without seeing your mouth kissing another man. Go into the tent. God knows I'd die before hairm should come to you. But not to-night can I stay beside you. Or kiss you."

He carried her into the tent and put her on her bed. She had made all the night-preparations herself, placing the pillows on both cots and turning back the sun-sweetened blankets.

Adam left her sobbing, buttoned the tent-flaps outside, and placed a barricade of kettles and pans which could not be touched without disturbing him on the hill. Then, taking up his own bed, he marched off through the ferns, edging his burden among dense boughs as he ascended.

When he had made the joints of his couch creak with many uneasy turnings, had clinched at leaves, and started up to return to the tent, only to check himself in the act as often as he started, he lost consciousness in uneasy dreams rather than fell asleep.

He was smothering, and yet could not open his lips to gasp for a breath of air. Then he was drowning: he gulped in vast sheets of water upon his lungs. An alarm sounded from Eva's barricade. He heard the pans and kettles clanging and her own voice in screams which pierced him, yet he could not move. A nightmare of heat enveloped him; the smothering element pouring upon his lungs was not water, but smoke; and he knew if no effort of will could move his body to her rescue he must be perishing himself.

After these brief sensations his existence was as blank as the empty void outside the worlds, until his ears began to throb like drums, and he felt water, like the tears he had shed in the morning, running all over his face. Eva held him in her arms, and alternately kissed his head and drenched it from the lake.

Moreover, he was in the boat, outside the bay, and their island glowed like a furnace before his dazzled eyes.

Those pine woods where he had gone to sleep were roaring up toward heaven in a column of fire. The tent was burning, all its interior illuminated until every object showed its minutest lines. He thought he saw some of Eva's dark hairs in an upturned hair-brush on the wash-stand.

Fire ran along the cliff-edge and dropped hissing brands into the lake. Old moss logs and pine-trees dry as tinder sent out sickening heat. The light ran like a flash up the tree over their stove, and in an instant its crown was wavering with flames. The grass itself caught here and there, and in whatever direction the eye turned, new fires as instantaneously sprang out to meet it.

Stumps blazed up like lighted altars, or like huge gas-jets suddenly turned on. Adam saw one log lying endwise downhill, one side of which was crumbling into coals of fierce and tremulous heat, while from the other side still sprung unsinged a delicate tuft of ferns.

The smoke was driving straight upward in a quivering current, and in Lake Magog's depths another island seemed to be on fire.

Sublime as the sight was, all these details impressed themselves on the man in an instant, and he turned his face directly up toward the woman.

"Darling, your face looks blistered," said Adam.

"It feels blistered," replied Eva. "I'll put some water on it, now that you've caught your breath again. I thought I could not get you out from those burning trees."

"But you dragged me down the hill?"

"Yes, and then dipped you in the lake and pushed off with you in the boat. I don't know how I did it. But here we are together."

Adam bathed her face carefully himself, and held her tight in his arms. The unspeakable love of which he had dreamed, and the heat of the burning island, seemed welding them together without other sign than the fact.