Isla Heron

“What’s that you’re sayin’?” he asked. “What’s that you said, gentleman, about Isly Heron?”

“I do not need, surely, to tell you that she is deaf and dumb,” said the trustee. “You cannot speak to her by signs, as Jacob did when he came!”

“Deef!” cried Joe, and his voice rang through the room like a trumpet. “Isly Heron deef? It’s a lie, whoever says so. Isly, why don’t you speak to me? why don’t you speak to these folks, and tell ’em not to call you out o’ your name?

“Isly Heron deef and dumb, her that sings like a bird, and talks like angels in the sky? Why, gentleman, and you, lady stranger, you – you don’t understand what you’re sayin’. I tell ye, if God only allowed one voice on this airth, that voice ’ud be Isly Heron’s. And old Joe comes to see his young lady, and she won’t speak to him. Oh, Isly, Isly, for yer father’s sake, speak to old Joe just once, if ye never do again!”

He was down on the floor again, crouching at her feet. Isla looked round the room, with wild eyes of a trapped creature that sees death before it; she saw the grave wonder, the doubt and distress, in the faces of the two spectators; she saw the agony of pleading in the rugged, misshapen features of the fisherman. She looked, – ah! where else should she turn now for comfort? In the face of her little Jacob; Jacob, for whose dear sake she had borne and suffered all; to whom now, perhaps, she was bringing shame, punishment for her sin; for she never doubted its being a sin. Jacob was smiling, pleased and happy at seeing a face that he remembered well in the old days at home. Those days were growing dim now for Jacob, and the new life filled his little cup with joy and comfort. He looked happily up at his sister, but met her eyes all fierce and burning, saw her face drawn and distorted with pain. Jacob did not understand pain, and Isla looked dreadful. He shrank from her, and caught the hand that was next to him, the hand of the principal of the school, and nestled in her gown.

When Isla Heron saw that, she threw out her arms, and cried aloud.

“God!” she cried in her extremity. “God! God! where are you?” Then, with her bird-like motion, she swung out from among them, pushing aside the hands that would have held her, avoiding the kind arms that sought to stay her; out of the room, and down the stair, flying so light and swift that no one missed the wings; out of the room and down the stair; and, before any one could stir to follow her, they heard the front door open quickly, close lightly, – Isla was gone!

CHAPTER XII.

THE WILD ROCKS AGAIN

HOME! home to the Wild Rocks, to the sea and the sky! Away, fast as flying feet might go, from the walls that shut out life and light, that stifled heart and soul! Since the sin was sinned in vain; since she must be turned away with shame, if she did not go of her own accord, and that quickly; since with her the little brother, for whose dear sake she had planned the sin, must be sent too, to share the shame, and lose all the help and happiness that lay before him if he might but stay; oh! and above all, above all, since he, the little cherished one, had turned his face from her and clung to the new friends, who could give so much, while she had nothing but her great love; since all these things were, home to the Wild Rocks, praying for the flight of a bird, speeding straight, with the steps of a child who had learned to run with the hares and the mountain sheep. Many turned to look at the girl, but none sought to stop her. Rather people stood aside, as for the flight of an arrow, feeling the passage of some dire need that would not be stayed nor questioned. Home! home to the Wild Rocks!

Captain Ezekiel and his mate, making all ready for the homeward voyage, never noticed the slight figure that hovered about the wharf, slipping behind a corner or a barrel when they turned their faces that way, venturing nearer when they set them toward the sea. When they hoisted the sail, they never saw a shadow that flitted past them, a slender shape that passed noiseless as a bird, and slipped down the narrow stairs of the little cabin, and was gone. There were no passengers that day, or none that the captain knew of. He sailed out of the harbour on an easy wind, and for some hours the schooner made good headway, running lightly in a smooth sea; but at twilight the breeze dropped away, and soon the vessel lay rolling on a sea of purple glass, shot with golden lights. “Ain’t goin’ to have a quick chance this time, Elmer!” said the captain; and Elmer, aloft, at work on the gaff topsail, grunted, with his knife between his teeth, and agreed with the captain.

The purple faded into gray, softened into black velvet, with stars trailing their slender lines of gold across. The sea breathed deep and gently, and the schooner rolled slowly on its broad bosom, making little progress forward. The captain and Elmer brought out their store of ship biscuit and corned beef, and made coffee in the little forecastle, and, while they were busy over these matters, the same light shape came softly up the stairs, and, passing forward, hid itself among the rigging and piles of rope. Once some small object was displaced, and Captain Ezekiel raised his head at the sound.

“Did you hear anythin’ movin’ forrard there, Elmer?”

“Cat!” said Elmer, raising a mug of coffee to his lips.

“So ’tis!” assented the captain. “Caught a rat, likely, and got her supper. Well now, ain’t this awful moderate? I don’t call this no kind of a chance. You better go to bed, Elmer, when you’ve got them dishes done up.”

Elmer burrowed in the little cabin, and slept like a woodchuck. The lonely watcher in the bow saw the captain’s sturdy figure standing at the wheel, turning the spokes from time to time, smoking his pipe with calm, regular puffs, studying sky and sea with patient inquiry. It grew cold, and the dew gathered thick, and dripped from rope and spar. Isla hardly felt the cold. She was breathing the sea air, her own air, once more, and the good boat was under her, and she was going home, – but going alone. She had been so shaken and torn with fear and pain these many months, her life and strength had gone so entirely into the part she was playing, the goal she must reach, that now there seemed nothing in life so good as this, to sit quiet, with no one to see her or speak to her, rising and falling with that slow, calm breathing of the waters, as her own sea-gulls loved to fall and rise. To-morrow, the awaking again to pain and loneliness, and the thought of what she had lost forever; tonight, rest; rest, with no thought nor feeling, only the sight of the quiet sea dimpling and lapping below, the quiet sky bending above. Rest!

She must have slept at last, for she was roused by cheerful voices, and came to herself with a start. The dawn was breaking pale and clear, the stars still shining; the east was tender with rose color; below the faint, sweet glow lay a band of green, cold and pure as chrysoprase; and against this green towered a great black rock.

“Half-past three!” said the captain, looking at his watch, as he climbed down into the boat which Elmer held ready against the side. “Longest chance I ever had, save and except one. Reckon we shall have to rout out the folks to get us some breakfast, – my good land! what’s that?”

The good boat was staunch, but that was a perilous moment, for both men started to their feet when Isla’s light figure dropped down, and sank with one motion into the bow.

“Who – who are ye?” asked the captain, in a stout voice which quavered strangely. “Are ye a livin’ woman? Say quick, before I heave ye out o’ here.”

“Oh, Captain Ezekiel, it is Isla! Isla Heron! Take me home, will you? Home to the island. I am never going away again.”

“And when we come to the beach,” said the captain, telling about it afterwards, “and I was just thinkin’ how I would get the poor child home to my house and get her warm, and then mebbe she’d feel like tellin’ me where she come from and all about it, – I was just thinkin’, when out she jumps like a flash, and says, ‘Thank you, captain!’ that pretty way she had, and she was gone, up and out over the rocks, quicker’n any bird I ever saw fly.”

Up and over the rocks! Oh, the good rocks, gray and black, with their clinging lichens of orange and russet! Oh, the friendly touch of them on her feet as she ran! The beach, with its white shell-sand disfigured by heads and entrails of fish, had no charm to stay the girl for an instant. The rocks drew her. Over them, away and away, round the point where the cliff nodded outward; there was home, and rest, and peace. The light broadened and brightened, the sea turned from gray to blue again, the grass shimmered in green and gold, for it was buttercup time. Isla stopped now and again to lay her hand on some well-known stone, to greet an old tree that had been her friend ever since she could remember. The ravens were still asleep, were they? Lazy old ravens; how she would startle them! But they would see that she came alone. She moaned, and ran on the faster.

Past the Dead Valley now. They were sleeping, too, the old mammoths, – they had never missed her, had never known how she dreamed of them, how she longed for them. The sea knew; it murmured and sang to her, telling her over and over again, how glad it was to see her home again. Now, only one more point to round, and she was home indeed. The strip of white sand where Jacob had slept that last time she ever left him till now, the roll of seaweed that marked the boundary line; then through the swampy bit, and up into the little green glade, where the cottage clung to the wall of the sheltering cliff behind it. Isla stood and looked where her home should be, and saw a heap of ashes, gray as the rock behind them, with charred beams scattered here and there.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST

NOT many days after this, a sad and anxious group of people stood beside the ruins of the Heron cottage. Joe Brazybone, or the distracted ghost of him, the trustee, who had thrown over everything else and come with Joe, and the young missionary. The latter had come to visit the school only the day after Isla’s flight; what more natural than that she should join in the search? The trustee had gladly acceded to her petition that she might accompany him. “Yes, yes!” he said; “a woman is the thing. A woman can make her listen; poor lost lamb! Miss Stewart cannot leave her post, and you are the very one we need.”

Here they stood now, looking blankly about them. They had heard, in the village, of the cottage having been burned soon after the Heron children left it, by some wanton boys, who had dared each other to eat their supper in the “Witch-house,” and had built a fire carelessly, and fled when they saw the mischief they had wrought. No one had seen Isla since her return, though one and another had made search for her. Captain Ezekiel spent all the time between the two last trips in searching and calling. He fancied he saw her once, but, if it were she, she had fled at sight or sound of him, and it might have been a young lamb, he said, running quick and light through the woods. He brought food with him, and left it near the ashes of the cottage; when he came again, it was gone, and he hoped the child had taken it.

Where should search begin? The trustee looked about him, hopelessly. If the islanders themselves could not find the lost girl, what could he, a stranger, hope to do? His face brightened as he turned to look at Joe. The man was questing here and there like a hound, spying at every tree, catching at every bent leaf or broken twig. His eyes were closed to sharp blue points, and their glance pierced where it struck. Suddenly he stopped and threw up his head, and, in all his distress, the trustee thought again that the creature wanted a tail to wag, and pitied him his mistaken humanity.

“She’s passed here!” said Joe, speaking for the first time, in a thick, husky voice. “She’s passed here, gentleman and preacher, Isly has. I knowed it before, but I wanted to make surer than sure. Look at here!”

He held up two or three shells strung together, and they recognized part of a shell bracelet that Isla always wore. Joe’s great hand shook as he held it up, and the breath hissed through his teeth.

“We’ll find her, sir!” he said, putting the shells in his bosom. “We’ll find Isly this day. If she’s willin’, that is!” he added, turning upon them almost savagely. “This hull island is Isly Heron’s own dooryard, I want ye to understand, gentleman and preacher. She’s to home here, to go where she likes and do as she likes, and I’d like to see any one try to hender her. She lets common folks live up to the fur end, and that’s because she’s the lady she is. Brazybones know, I tell ye; Brazybones know Herons! And if she don’t want us to find her, why then she won’t be found. But I hope, – ” his voice broke and faltered, and the glare died out of his eyes, – “I’m in hopes that my young lady will let us pass the time o’ day with her, seein’ we come so fur, and there’s things old Joe wants to explain to her. There’s things he’s got to say to her, I tell ye. There! we’re losin’ time while I’m palaverin’ here. You foller me, gentleman and lady, and foller soft, if you ever went soft in yer lives!”

He led the way, the others following, through the little Home Valley, as Isla called it, through a narrow rocky pass and over a great brown hill, down into the Dead Valley, which lay beyond. The trustee looked about him with amazement, for, though he had travelled far, he had never seen such a place as this on the earth. He would have asked some questions, but Joe waved him on with feverish eagerness.

“Look here!” he said. “She’s been here, and not so long ago. Look at the yew-bed, here!”

They looked in wonder at the great cushion of trailing yew that spread thick over the ground under one of the dead cedars. It curled close, a perfumed mat; no queen could have a softer couch. Their eyes sought in vain any print of a light form, though Joe was pointing eagerly.

“I tell ye she’s been here!” he repeated. “No place she loved better to sleep in than one of these yew-beds. She mostly never slept within doors in summer, Isly didn’t; and this kind o’ place she loved to lay in. Look! here’s tufts o’ wool in it, too. Mebbe a lamb came and couched down with her for company; they allers loved Isly, and come meechin’ round her whenever she’d go abroad; and mebbe she felt lonesome, and let one of ’em snuggle up to her.”

His voice broke, and he hurried on; the other two felt their own eyes dimmed, as the picture came before them, – the lonely girl lying down to sleep under God’s kind sky, with the wild lamb in her arms.

Still on, in silence now. They had made a circuit, and were coming near the sea again, but through rougher, wilder ways. Deep gorges dropped away before them, black as night, with huge boulders wedged across them; in the wider ones a tiny strip of green, with fresh water trickling down. Here they came to a broad meadow, with black spruces, and rocks of orange-tawny lichen glowing like flame. Again, they found themselves in a moss or bog, with rounded tufts, soft and springy, and purple flags nodding here and there; while higher up (for June had come again) they saw the scarlet sorrel spread like a gay mantle on the great hill shoulder.

At the foot of one of these huge shoulders Joe Brazybone paused, and dropped his head, questing silently; then, with a gesture of caution, he led the way upward.

“Do not call!” they had said in the village. “If you call, or startle her, she will go crazed, if she is not already.”

Joe knew that well, and from time to time he turned fiercely on his companions, almost threatening in his earnest gestures. He would gladly have bidden them stay below, and let him go alone to find his mistress; but he knew, poor Joe, in his humble, dog-like understanding, he knew his voice was not the one that Isla would be most likely to listen to, that his face was not the one to please her best, coming suddenly into her solitude. “Gentle folks wants their like,” he said, patiently to himself. “Old Joe ain’t the proper person to speak first to his young lady, supposin’ she’s willin’ to be spoke to.”

Could they but move silently! The grass was soft and new, and made no sound, but here and there lay dry leaves of last year, caught in the roots of the trees and held there against the blasts that sweep and tear through the winter; these crackled if one touched them; now and again a twig snapped, for the preacher’s dress, gather it close as she could about her, would sometimes float and catch as she passed. Up the huge crag they went, drawing their very breath in fear; and now, Joe, who reached the summit first, flung back his hand, half beckoning, half warning. The others crept nearer. The rock was crested with spruce and cedar; peering though the black fringes, they saw a tiny circle hollowed, carpeted with russet needles and velvet moss, with strawberry and twin-flower creeping together. Here Isla was sitting, braiding her long hair. A leaf, half full of wild strawberries, lay beside her, and with it the broken half of the shell bracelet. Her face was worn with pain, her eyes were dark and soft, with the look of many tears. The black trees bent over her, pressed round her, as if sheltering and protecting her. It was as if she had sought this little secret chamber of the wild rocks, sure of protection and solitude. Who should dare to speak to the island child?

Was there some movement, some sigh? No one else heard it, but Isla suddenly caught her breath; started, turned. For an instant the eyes of the watchers caught hers, full of leaping terror; then, silently, she sprang through the screen of trees, and fled away across the rocks. They must follow her now, as best they might. Keeping out of sight whenever it was possible, the three sped in pursuit; but their hearts sank when they came out full on the further slope of the hill, and saw what lay before them.

Some tremendous convulsion of Nature had in bygone ages struck and shattered this point of the island. There must have been shock upon shock, of awful force, to rear and twist and crush and rend the rocks into these fantastic nightmare shapes. They stretched thus for some distance, a silent tumult, a tempest turned to stone; then came the verge.

Tower on tower, pinnacle on pinnacle, rising, rising. And, looking down, one sheer fall below another; at the foot, the surf leaping, dancing, tossing to and fro, flinging up white arms as if beckoning, entreating.

And from crag to crag ran the wild girl, light as the springing foam itself, flitting now up, now down, but always onward, swift as a bird, never glancing behind her.

Swift as a bird? What birds were these, that swept out from some hidden crevice of the rock, black as itself? They balanced on broad wings, hovered about the child’s head, as if greeting her; then, with hoarse cries, drove heavily forward, keeping near her as she ran.

When Joe Brazybone saw the ravens; he stopped dead. A dizziness seized him, and he sank on his knees, and pulled off his ragged cap. “The woman!” he muttered hoarsely. “Let the woman speak to her! Nothin’ but the ravens can foller her where she’s goin’. Let the woman speak, and you and I’ll stop here and pray.”

The trustee hesitated a moment – measured the gulfs before him with his eye; glanced at the bowed figure beside him; then he, too, dropped to his knees, and motioned to the preacher to try her voice, since her feet could go no further.

But the preacher was a brave woman, and was minded to go yet a step forward. One and two steps she took; then came upon a toppling verge, below which was nothing but the empty air and the tumbling sea below. She recoiled, and for the first time a human voice rang through that awful solitude.