“And it’s a dark, foggy night,” continued Mrs. MacDowell, with a glance towards the river. “It’s much too late to—”
“Why, Mother,” laughed Freda, “it’s never late. That’s just a conventional idea. Maybe the fog will blow away in an hour or so, and the stars come out and even the moon, too, for all we know.”
“But I don’t want you to go, my girl,” she continued, stepping nearer Freda, and peering critically into her face.
“I haven’t worried much about your consent, Mother, during the past few years, have I?” she asked crisply. “Do you think I would begin to do so now—to-night?”
There was almost studied scorn in Freda’s carriage as she stepped widely past her mother and left the verandah, while Mrs. MacDowell stood watching her disappear in the direction of the river.
Down at the boathouse, under the high cliff, she presently awaited Ted’s coming. There were sights and sounds here to beguile her impetuous thoughts. The night was warm and her prophecy of moonlight came true. From above the opposite shore the great, yellow orb lifted with delicate tremblings, as if its sphere were made of elastic substance. Its golden light caressed the whimsical clouds of mist that scurried like steam above the dull, green water. The waves lifted and fell, but never broke, as if, on such a night, they were anxious to be so gentle.
She sat perfectly still, knowing it was all madness, but as determined as she ever had been about anything. Then she turned her head thinking she heard the sound of his launch. But she had not heard it. It came with silent engines, like a sleek, white ghost, long and graceful, emerging from the fog and slowing down as it bent its course to sidle noiselessly closer and closer. She stood up, shrinking back, half afraid, as if this trim craft were not guided by human hands, but was approaching like an event, exquisite, but inevitable. She sprang then to the landing to clasp his hands as he drew her aboard. “Freda, you’re wonderful,” she heard him say, as the boathouse grew smaller, and the nose of the launch bore out into the broad, grey, depths of river and moon and mist.
No one knows how beautiful Lockwood is until he sees it from a boat on a bright night. There are broad, grey buildings whose massive stone faces shine like frost. Lines of glimmering lamps stretch far along the level thoroughfares and mark the streets that climb steeply upward from the water. In the midst, clusters of generous trees, motionless and black, send up, somewhere from their indefinite mass, dark spires into the soft, grey sky, while a tall clock-tower gazes with its yellow eyes east and south and west. At midnight, town and river are silent, save for the mournful chime of the clock marking a new day. And one who hears the message from the river finds a wistful, unspeakable sadness in its tone.
The mists cleared to reveal a white craft floating aimlessly in mid-stream. The moon threw into bold sculpture a man and a woman who lounged in silence there. Both were as still as the becalmed night, their restlessness appeased as by a magic from the golden moon. There were no words. In the woman’s heart there was no happiness. It had not been love. It had been wild regret and mad despair.