The sons of the squatter being summoned by what Mr. Moore called "yodeling," a pastoral cry which he sounded forth unexpectedly and wildly between his two hands, brought the hot rocks to the company by the simple process of tumbling them into a piece of sackcloth and dragging them over the ground. They were really rocks, fragments broken off, studded with small oysters; many parts of the lagoon were lined with these miniature peaks. Mr. Moore produced oyster-knives; and, with the best conscience in the world, they added another to the shell-heaps of Florida for the labors of future antiquarians.
And then, presently, they embarked. The sun was sinking; they floated away from the squatter's camp, down the winding creek between the leaning palmettoes, across the salt-marsh, over which the crows were now flying in a long line, and out upon the sunset-tinted lagoon. The Emperadora was waiting for them; it was moonlight when they reached home.
CHAPTER XIX.
The next afternoon Margaret was strolling in the old garden of East Angels. The place now belonged to Evert Winthrop; but it had not pleased him to make many changes, and the garden remained almost as much of a blooming wilderness as before. When at home (and it was seldom that she was absent for any length of time, as she had been the previous day) Margaret was occupied at this hour; it was the hour when Mrs. Rutherford liked to have "some one" read to her. This "some one" was always Margaret.
Poor Aunt Katrina had been a close prisoner all summer; an affection of the hip had prostrated her so that she had not been able to leave East Angels, or her bed. Everything that care or money could do for her had been done, Winthrop having sent north for "fairly ship-loads of every known luxury," Betty Carew declared, "so that it makes a real my ship comes from India, you know, loaded with everything wonderful, from brass beds down to verily ice-cream!" It was true that a schooner had brought ice; and many articles had been sent down from New York by sea. The interior of the old house now showed its three eras of occupation, as an old Roman tower shows its antique travertine at the base, its mediæval sides, and modern top. In the lower rooms and in the corridors there remained the original Spanish bareness, the cool open spaces empty of furniture. Then came the attempted prettinesses of Mrs. Thorne, chiefly manifested in toilet-tables made out of wooden boxes, covered with paper-cambric, and ruffled and flounced in white muslin, in a very large variety of table mats, in pin-cushions, in pasteboard brackets adorned with woollen embroidery. Last of all, incongruously placed here and there, came the handsome modern furniture which had been ordered from the North by Winthrop when Dr. Kirby finally said that Mrs. Rutherford would not be able to leave East Angels for many a month to come.
The thick walls of the old house, the sea-breeze, the spaciousness of her shaded room, together with her own reduced condition, had prevented the invalid from feeling the heat. Margaret and Winthrop, who had not left her, had learned to lead the life which the residents led; they went out in the early morning, and again at nightfall, but through the sunny hours they kept within-doors; during the middle of the day indeed no one stirred; even the negroes slept.
The trouble with the hip had declared itself on the very day Winthrop had announced his engagement to the group of waiting friends at the lower door. The news, therefore, had not been repeated in the sick-room; Mrs. Rutherford did not know it even now. Her convalescence was but just beginning; throughout the summer, and more than ever at present, Dr. Kirby told them, the hope of permanent recovery for her lay in the degree of tranquillity, mental as well as physical, in which they should be able to maintain her, day by day. Winthrop and Margaret knew that tranquillity would be at an end if she should learn what had happened; they therefore took care that she should not learn. There was, indeed, no occasion for hurry, there was to be no talk of marriage until Garda should be at least eighteen. In the mean time Aunt Katrina lived, in one way, in the most complete luxury; she had now but little pain, and endless was the skill, endless the patience, with which the six persons who were devoted to her—Margaret, Winthrop, Dr. Kirby, Betty Carew, Celestine, and Looth—labored to maintain her serenity unbroken, to vary her few pleasures. Betty, it is true, had to stop outside the door each time, and press back almost literally, with her hand over her mouth, the danger of betraying the happiness of "dear Evert" and "darling Garda" through her own inadvertence; but her genuine affection for Katrina accomplished the miracle of making her for the time being almost advertent, though there was sure to be a vast verbal expansion afterwards, when she had left the room, which was not unlike the physical one that ensued when she released herself, after paying a visit, from her own tightly fitting best gown.
To-day Aunt Katrina had felt suddenly tired, and the reading had been postponed; Margaret had come out to the garden. She strolled down a path which had recently been reopened to the garden's northern end; here there was a high hedge, before which she paused for a moment to look at a sensitive-plant which was growing against the green. Suddenly she became conscious that she heard the sound of low voices outside; then followed a laugh which she was sure she knew well. She stepped across the boundary ditch, full of bloom, and looked through the foliage. Beyond was an old field; then another high hedge. In the field, a little to the right, there was a thicket, and here, protected by its crescent-shaped bend, which enclosed them both in its half-circle, were Garda and Lucian; Lucian was sketching his companion.
Only the sound of their voices reached Margaret, not their words. She looked at them for a moment; then she stepped back over the ditch, passed through the garden, and returned to the house, where she seated herself on a stone bench which stood near the lower door. Here she waited, she waited nearly an hour; then Garda appeared, alone.