"Come on and get in, Mary," he urged. "It's great. Beats those old rafts you used to pole at Lee's ranch, all hollow. Don't you want to try it?"
Mary hesitated. To go off and leave Jack sitting on the creek-bank, unable to accompany her, would emphasize his crippled condition. To refuse to leave him would only be added proof in his present sensitive mood that he was a "drag on every one."
"The sun is dropping so low we ought to be starting home before it begins to get chilly," she said with a meaning glance towards Jack, which to her relief Norman interpreted aright. He answered cheerfully,
"Oh, go on! It's a cinch you won't get chilly if you push that old boat along as fast as I did, and if we get cold waiting for you, it won't be many minutes till we'll be 'seen, a-rolling down the Bowling Green' towards home."
"All right, then," said Mary, climbing in as he climbed out to hold the boat steady for her. "I won't go far, but I'm surely glad to get out on the water again."
She took the oar he handed her, and with a skilful push against the bank she sent the boat gliding out into the stream. As she went off she thought: "That was considerate of Norman, to put it the way he did—to include Jack with himself as a matter of course, and not to remind him of his helplessness by saying he'd stay and take care of him. Norman has lots of tact for a boy of his age; more than I have. I must have hurt Jack many a time by my inconsiderate speeches, but I had no idea he felt so horribly sensitive about being dependent."
All the way up the creek she was so occupied with thinking of what Jack had said, and so depressed over the depths of mental suffering which his exclamations revealed, that she plied her oar mechanically, only partly awake to the scenes about her. But the long even strokes, first on one side and then the other, sent her darting forward through the water so rapidly that she soon reached a turn in the creek which she had never passed before, and as she rounded the curve such a beautiful sight greeted her that she cried out in pleased surprise, "How perfectly heavenly!"
On one side the bank towered up into a high, steep cliff, straight as a wall. It was completely covered with ferns; delicate, feathery maiden-hair ferns, as luxuriantly green as in mid-summer. In this sheltered spot they were still left untouched by the frost, although it was now December. Everywhere else vegetation was dry and sere, but the green freshness of this bank was accounted for by a number of tiny water-falls splashing down from unseen springs above, and sending a light spray in every direction, as fine as mist.
"I'm coming straight back here in the morning," she said to herself, "and dig up a lot of these ferns before the frost gets them. I can't think of anything lovelier to send to Gay for a Christmas greeting than a clump of them growing in a box—a rustic box covered with bark and dainty lichens. One would be nice for Mrs. Rochester, too. She's just the kind that would appreciate such a gift. Well, that solves two of my hardest problems of what to give." That trip up the creek in The Swan was a voyage of discovery in more ways than one, for Mary came upon the fact that she had grown older in the last quarter of an hour, quite as suddenly and unexpectedly as she had come upon the fern-bank. That cry of Jack's, "Heavens! If I could only end it all!" had shocked her into a deeper understanding of pain, and human limits of endurance.
She had always prided herself on her ability to imagine herself in other people's places, and until now had believed that she fully understood and appreciated the depths of Jack's suffering. Now she saw that she had not even begun to fathom it. His bravery had deceived her. All the while that she had been thinking that he was growing accustomed to his lot and that time was making it easier for him to bear, a fire of rebellion was smouldering fiercely within him, making each day one of new torture.