Jupiter Lights

“Do you see many of them here?”

“Not many. I am sorry to say my father does not like them; he thinks them affected.”

“That is the last thing I should call them.”

“Well, those who come here really do say ‘serpents’ and ’crocodiles.’”

“Do you mean as an oath?” said Eve, thinking vaguely of “Donner und blitzen.”

“As an oath? I have never heard it used in that way,” answered Miss Sabrina, astonished. “I mean that they call the snakes serpents, and the alligators crocodiles; my father thinks that so very affected.”

Thus the wan-cheeked mistress of Romney endeavored to entertain their guest.

That night Eve was sitting by her fire. The mattress of Meadows was no longer on the floor; the English girl had started on her return journey the day before, escorted to the pier by all the blacks of the island, respectful and wondering. The presence of little Jack asleep in his crib behind a screen, with Dilsey on her pallet beside him, made the large wind-swept chamber less lonely; still its occupant felt overwhelmed with gloom. There was a light tap at the door, and Cicely entered; she had taken off her gay blue frock, and wore a white dressing-gown. “I thought I’d see if you were up.” She went across and looked at Jack for a moment; then she came back to the fire. “You haven’t touched your hair, nor unbuttoned a button; are you always like that?”

“Like what?”

“Trim and taut, like a person going out on horse-back. I should love to see you with your hair down; I should love to see you run and shriek!”

“I fear you are not likely to see either.”

Cicely brought her little teeth together with a click. “I’ve got to get something over in the north wing; will you come? The wind blows so, it’s splendid!”

“I will go if you wish,” said Eve.

They went down the corridor and turned into another, both of them lighted by the streaks of moonlight which came through the half-closed or broken shutters; the moon was nearly at its full, and very brilliant; a high wind was careering by outside – it cried at the corner of the house like a banshee. At the end of the second hall Cicely led the way through a labyrinth of small dark chambers, now up a step, now down a step, hither and thither; finally opening a door, she ushered Eve into a long, high room, lighted on both sides by a double row of windows, one above the other. Here there were no shutters, and the moonlight poured in, making the empty space, with its white walls and white floor, as light as day. “It’s the old ballroom,” said Cicely. “Wait here; I will be back in a moment.” She was off like a flash, disappearing through a far door.

Eve waited, perforce. If she had felt sure that she could find her way back to her room, she would have gone; but she did not feel sure. As to leaving Cicely alone in that remote and disused part of the house, at that late hour of the night, she cared nothing for that; Eve was hard with people she did not like; she did not realize herself how hard she was. She went to one of the windows and looked out.

These lower windows opened on a long veranda. The veranda was only a foot above the ground; any one, Eve reflected, could cross its uneven surface and look in; she almost expected to see some one cross, and peer in at her, his face opposite hers on the other side of the pane. The moonlight shone on the swaying evergreens; within sight were the waters of the Sound. Presently she became conscious of a current of wind blowing through the room, and turned to see what caused it. There had been no sound of an opening door, or any other sound, but a figure was approaching, coming down the moonlit space rapidly with a waving motion. It was covered with something transparent that glittered and shone; its outlines were vague. It came nearer and nearer, without a sound. Then a mass of silvery gauze was thrown back, revealing Cicely attired in an old-fashioned ball dress made of lace interwoven with silver threads and decked with little silvery stars; there was a silver belt high up under her arms, and a wreath of the silvery stars shone in her hair. She stood a moment; then snatching up the gauze which had fallen at her feet, she held one end of it, and let the other blow out on the strong cold wind which now filled the room. With this cloudy streamer in her hand, she began lightly and noiselessly to dance, moving over the moonlit floor, now with the gauze blowing out in front of her, now waving behind her as she flew along. Suddenly she let it drop, and, coming to Eve, put her arms round her waist and forced her forward. Eve resisted. But Cicely’s hands were strong, her hold tenacious; she drew her sister-in-law down the room in a wild gallopade. In the midst of it, giving a little jump, she seized Eve’s comb. Eve’s hair, already loosened, fell down on her shoulders. Cicely clapped her hands, and began to take little dancing steps to the tune of “Niggerless, niggerless, nig-ig-ig-gerless!” chanted in a silvery voice. When she came to “less,” she held out her gleaming skirt, and dipped down in a wild little courtesy.

Eve picked up her comb and turned back towards the door.

Cicely danced on ahead, humming her song; they passed through the labyrinth of dark little rooms, the glimmering dress acting as guide through the dimness. Cicely went as far as the second hall; here she stopped.

“It’s the wind, you know,” she said, in her usual voice; “when it blows like this, I always have to do something; sometimes I call out and shout. But I don’t care for it, really; I don’t care for anything!” Her face, as she spoke, looked set and melancholy. She opened a door and disappeared.

The next day there was nothing in her expression to indicate that there had been another dance at Romney the night before, besides the one at the negro quarters.

Eve was puzzled. She had thought her so unimaginative and quiet; “a passionless, practical little creature, cool and unimpulsive, whose miniature beauty led poor Jack astray, and made him believe that she had a soul!” This had been her estimate. She was alone with the baby; she took him to the window and looked at him earnestly. The little man smiled back at her, playing with the crape of her dress. No, there was nothing of Cicely here; the blue eyes, golden hair, and frank smile – all were his father over again.

“We’ll make that Mr. Morrison come back, baby; and then you and I will go away together,” she whispered, stroking his curls.

“Meh Kiss’m,” said Jack. It was as near as he could come to “Merry Christmas.”

“Before another Christmas I’ll get you away from her forever!” murmured the aunt, passionately.

V

“OUT rowing? If you are doing it to entertain me – ” said Eve.

“I should never think of that; there’s only one thing here that entertains you, and that’s baby,” Cicely answered. She spoke without insistence; her eyes had their absent-minded expression.

“Cicely, give him to me,” Eve began. She must put her wish into words some time. “If I could only make you feel how much I long for it! I will devote my life to him; and it will be a pleasure to me, a charity, because I am so alone in the world. You are not alone; you have other ties. Listen, Cicely, I will make any arrangement you like; you shall always have the first authority, but let me have him to live with me; let me take him away when I go. I will even acknowledge everything you have said: my brother was much older than you were; it’s natural that those months with him should seem to you now but an episode – something that happened at the beginning of your life, but which need not go on to its close.”

“I was young,” said Cicely, musingly.

“Young to marry – yes.”

“No; I mean young to have everything ended.”

“But that is what I am telling you, it must not be ended; Mr. Morrison must come back to you.”

“He may,” answered Cicely, looking at her companion for a moment with almost a solemn expression.

“Then give baby to me now, and let me go away – before he comes.”

Cicely glanced off over the water; they were standing on the low bank above the Sound. “He could not go north now, in the middle of the winter,” she answered, after a moment.

“In the early spring, then?”

“I don’t know; perhaps.”

Eve’s heart gave a bound. She was going to gain her point.

Having been brought up by a man, she had learned to do without the explanations, the details, which are dear to most feminine minds; so all she said was, “That’s agreed, then.” She was so happy that a bright flush rose in her cheeks, and her smile, as she spoke these last few words, was very sweet; those lips, which Miss Sabrina had thought so sullen, had other expressions.

Cicely looked at her. “You may marry too.”

Eve laughed. “There is no danger. To show you, to make you feel as secure as I do, I will tell you that there have been one or two – friends of Jack’s over there. Apparently I am not made of inflammable material.”

“When you are sullen – perhaps not. But when you are as you are now?”

“I shall always be sullen to that sort of thing. But we needn’t be troubled; there won’t be an army! To begin with, I am twenty-eight; and to end with, every one will know that I have willed my property to baby; and that makes an immense difference.”

“How does it make a difference?”

“In opportunities for marrying, if not also – as I really believe – for falling in love.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“True, you do not,” Eve replied; “you are the most extraordinary people in the world, you Southerners; I have been here nearly a month, and I am still constantly struck by it – you never think of money at all. And the strangest point is, that although you never think of it, you don’t in the least know how to get on without it; you cannot improve anything, you can only endure.”

“If you will tell Dilsey to get baby ready, I will see to the boat,” answered Cicely. She was never interested in general questions.

Presently they were afloat. They were in a large row-boat, with Pomp, Plato, Uncle Abram, and a field hand at the oars; Cicely steered; Eve and little Jack were the passengers. The home-island was four miles long, washed by the ocean on one side, the Sound on the other; on the north, Singleton Island lay very near; but on the south there was a broad opening, the next island being six miles distant. Here stood Jupiter Light; this channel was a sea-entrance not only to the line of Sounds, but also to towns far inland, for here opened on the west a great river-mouth, through which flowed to the sea a broad, slow stream coming from the cotton country. They were all good sailors, as they had need to be for such excursions, the Sounds being often rough. The bright winter air, too, was sharp; but Eve was strong, and did not mind it, and the ladies of Romney, like true Southerners, never believed that it was really cold, cold as it is at the North. The voyages in the row-boat had been many; they had helped to fill the days, and the sisters-in-law had had not much else with which to fill them; they had remained as widely apart as in the beginning, Eve absorbed in her own plans, Cicely in her own indifference. Little Jack was always of the party, as his presence made dialogue easy. They had floated many times through the salt marshes between the rattling reeds, they had landed upon other islands, whose fields, like those of Romney, had once been fertile, but which now showed submerged expanses behind the broken dikes, with here and there an abandoned rice-mill. Sometimes they went inland up the river, rowing slowly against the current; sometimes, when it was calm, they went out to sea. To-day they crossed to the other side of the Sound.

“What a long house Romney is!” said Eve, looking back. She did not add, “And if you drop anything on the floor at one end it shakes the other.”