does there?”
“No, I don’t see any one on the lake. I saw two men in that
billiard room at the back there, and there was a girl in the
ladies’ room, that was all. Isn’t this water cold?” She had
put her hand over the side and was trailing it in the blue-
black ripples made by his oars.
“Is it? I haven’t felt it yet.”
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He paused in his rowing and put out his hand, then
resumed. He would not row directly to that island to the
south. It was—too far—too early. She might think it odd.
Better a little delay. A little time in which to think—a little
while in which to reconnoiter. Roberta would be wanting to
eat her lunch (her lunch!) and there was a charming looking
point of land there to the west about a mile further on. They
could go there and eat first—or she could—for he would not
be eating to-day. And then—and then——
She was looking at the very same point of land that he was
—a curved horn of land that bent to the south and yet
reached quite far out into the water and combed with tall
pines. And now she added:
“Have you any spot in mind, dear, where we could stop and
eat? I’m getting a little hungry, aren’t you?” (If she would
only not call him dear, here and now!)
The little inn and the boathouse to the north were growing
momentarily smaller,—looking now, like that other boat-
house and pavilion on Crum Lake the day he had first
rowed there, and when he had been wishing that he might
come to such a lake as this in the Adirondacks, dreaming of
such a lake—and wishing to meet such a girl as Roberta—
then—— And overhead was one of those identical woolly
clouds that had sailed above him at Crum Lake on that
fateful day.
The horror of this effort!
They might look for water-lilies here to-day to kill time a
little, before—to kill time … to kill, (God)—he must quit
thinking of that, if he were going to do it at all. He needn’t
be thinking of it now, at any rate.
At the point of land favored by Roberta, into a minute
protected bay with a small, curved, honey-colored beach,
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and safe from all prying eyes north or east. And then he
and she stepping out normally enough. And Roberta, after
Clyde had extracted the lunch most cautiously from his bag,
spreading it on a newspaper on the shore, while he walked
here and there, making strained and yet admiring
comments on the beauty of the scene—the pines and the
curve of this small bay, yet thinking—thinking, thinking of
the island farther on and the bay below that again
somewhere, where somehow, and in the face of a
weakening courage for it, he must still execute this grim
and terrible business before him—not allow this carefully
planned opportunity to go for nothing—if—if—he were to
not really run away and leave all that he most desired to
keep.
And yet the horror of this business and the danger, now that
it was so close at hand—the danger of making a mistake of
some kind—if nothing more, of not upsetting the boat right—
of not being able to—to—oh, God! And subsequently,
maybe, to be proved to be what he would be—then—a
murderer. Arrested! Tried. (He could not, he would not, go
through with it. No, no, no!)
And yet Roberta, sitting here with him now on the sand,
feeling quite at peace with all the world as he could see.
And she was begining to hum a little, and then to make
advisory and practical references to the nature of their
coming adventure together—their material and financial
state from now on—how and where they would go from here
—Syracuse, most likely—since Clyde seemed to have no
objection to that—and what, once there, they would do. For
Roberta had heard from her brother-in-law, Fred Gabel, of a
new collar and shirt factory that was just starting up in
Syracuse. Might it not be possible for Clyde, for the time
being at least, to get himself a position with that firm at
once? And then later, when her own worst trouble was
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over, might not she connect herself with the same
company, or some other? And temporarily, since they had
so little money, could they not take a small room together,
somewhere in some family home, or if he did not like that,
since they were by no means so close temperamentally as
they once had been, then two small adjoining rooms,
maybe. She could still feel his unrelenting opposition under
all this present show of courtesy and consideration.
And he thinking, Oh, well, what difference such talk now?
And whether he agreed or whether he did not. What
difference since he was not going—or she either—that way.
Great God! But here he was talking as though to-morrow
she would be here still. And she would not be.
If only his knees would not tremble so; his hands and face
and body continue so damp.
And after that, farther on down the west shore of this small
lake in this little boat, to that island, with Clyde looking
nervously and wearily here and there to see that there was
no one—no one—not anywhere in sight on land or water—
no one. It was so still and deserted here, thank God. Here—
or anywhere near here might do, really,—if only he had the
courage so to do now, which he had not,—yet. Roberta
trailing her hand in the water, asking him if he thought they
might find some water-lilies or wild flowers somewhere on
shore. Water-lilies! Wild flowers! And he convincing himself
as he went that there were no roads, cabins, tents, paths,
anything in the form of a habitation among these tall, close,
ranking pines—no trace of any little boat on the widespread
surface of this beautiful lake on this beautiful day. Yet might
there not be some lone, solitary hunter and trapper or guide
or fisherman in these woods or along these banks? Might
there not be? And supposing there were one here now
somewhere? And watching!
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Fate!
Destruction!
Death! Yet no sound and no smoke. Only—only—these tall,
dark, green pines—spear-shaped and still, with here and
there a dead one—ashen pale in the hard afternoon sun, its
gaunt, sapless arms almost menacingly outstretched.
Death!
And the sharp metallic cry of a blue-jay speeding in the
depths of these woods. Or the lone and ghostly tap-tap-tap
of some solitary woodpecker, with now and then the red
line of a flying tanager, the yellow and black of a yellow-
shouldered blackbird.
“Oh, the sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home.”
It was Roberta singing cheerfully, one hand in the deep
blue water.
And then a little later—“I’ll be there Sunday if you will,” one
of the popular dance pieces of the day.
And then at last, after fully an hour of rowing, brooding,
singing, stopping to look at some charming point of land,
reconnoitering some receding inlet which promised water-
lilies, and with Roberta already saying that they must watch
the time and not stay out too long,—the bay, south of the
island itself—a beautiful and yet most funereally pine-
encircled and land delimited bit of water—more like a
smaller lake, connected by an inlet or passage to the larger
one, and yet itself a respectable body of water of perhaps
twenty acres of surface and almost circular in form. The
manner in which to the east, the north, the south, the west,
even, except for the passage by which the island to the
north of it was separated from the mainland, this pool or
tarn was encircled by trees! And cat-tails and water-lilies
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here and there—a few along its shores. And somehow
suggesting an especially arranged pool or tarn to which one
who was weary of life and cares—anxious to be away from
the strife and contentions of the world, might most wisely
and yet gloomily repair.
And as they glided into this, this still dark water seemed to
grip Clyde as nothing here or anywhere before this ever had
—to change his mood. For once here he seemed to be
fairly pulled or lured along into it, and having encircled its
quiet banks, to be drifting, drifting—in endless space where
was no end of anything—no plots—no plans—no practical
problems to be solved—nothing. The insidious beauty of
this place! Truly, it seemed to mock him—this strangeness
—this dark pool, surrounded on all sides by those
wonderful, soft, fir trees. And the water itself looking like a
huge, black pearl cast by some mighty hand, in anger
possibly, in sport or phantasy maybe, into the bosom of this
valley of dark, green plush—and which seemed bottomless
as he gazed into it.