Jack dropped his pebble; he was always wild with delight at the prospect of a voyage. Porley picked up his straw hat, and brought his little coat, in case the air should grow cool; in ten minutes they were afloat. Eve turned the canoe down the lake, rowing eastward.
After a voyage of twenty minutes, she headed the boat shoreward and landed; the woods hereabout had a gray-green look which tempted her; they brought back the memory of that first walk with Paul. “See to Jack,” she said to Porley briefly, lifting the child safely to the beach. “I shall be back soon.” Entering the wood, she walked on at random, keeping within sight of the water.
She was lost in a day-dream, one of those day-dreams which come sometimes to certain temperaments with such vividness that the real world disappears; she was with Paul, she was looking at him, his arm was round her, their future life together unrolled itself before her day by day, hour by hour, in all its details; in her happiness, all remembrance of anything else vanished away.
How long this state lasted she never knew. At a certain point a distant cry crossed the still ecstasy; but it reached her vaguely, it did not bring her back. A second summons was more distinct; but it seemed an impertinence which it was not necessary to answer. A third time came the sound, and now there were syllables: “Miss E-eve! Miss E-eve!” Then, a moment later, “Oh, Ba-by!” She recognized the shrillness of a negro woman’s voice—it was Porley. “Baby?” That could only mean Jack! The trance was over, she felt as if a whip had been brought suddenly down upon her shoulders. She rushed to the lake, and from there along the beach towards the spot where she had left the child.
The screams grew louder. A bend hid that part of the beach from her view; would she never reach the end of that bend! She was possessed by a great fear. “Oh, don’t let anything happen to baby!” She could not have told herself to whom she was appealing.
At last she reached the curve, she saw what had happened: the child, alone in the canoe, had been carried out to deep water.
Porley, frantic with grief, had waded out as far as she could; she was standing with the water up to her chin, sobbing aloud. Eve’s flushed face turned white. She beckoned to Porley to come to her. Then she forced herself to stand motionless, in order to recover her breath. As Porley came up, “Stop crying!” she commanded. “We must not frighten him. Go back under the trees where he cannot see you, and sit there quietly; don’t speak.”
When she was left alone, she went up the beach until she was on a line with the canoe; the boat moved waywardly and slowly, but it was being carried all the time still farther from the shore. “Jacky, are you having a good time out there?” she called, with a smiling face, as though the escapade had been his own, and he had cleverly outwitted them.
There was not a grain of the coward in the child. “Ess,” he called back, triumphantly. He was sitting on a folded shawl in the bottom of the canoe, holding on with his hands to the sides; his eyes came just above its edge.
“Aunty Eve is going to get a boat and come out after you,” Eve went on; “then we’ll go fishing. But Jack must sit perfectly still, or else she won’t come; perfectly still. Does Jacky hear?”