“I love you so—”
She took his hand and guided it with hers until it rested upon the child, wrapped in cloth which she had woven. “Life from life and added unto life,” she said. “Love from love and added unto love.”
The child was a woman child, and they named her Hope. She grew and thrived and they had great joy in her. When the old chief came to see her, he held her in his hands and gave her a musical name of his own. They translated it, Bird-with-Wide-Wings. Henceforward now they called her by this Indian name and now they called her Hope. The old chief grew fond of her, came oftener than ever, would sit in sun or shade quite still and content beside the cotton hammock in which she swung. The days went by, the weeks, the months, and she continued to thrive. She had Joan’s grey eyes, but save for this she was liker Aderhold. She lay regarding them, or laughed when they came toward her, or put out a small hand to touch them; she was happy and well, and they were glad, glad that she was on earth.
The hot season came and the rains, and in August heavy storms. Trees were levelled and the frail huts of the village suffered. The sea came high upon the land and the rain fell in sheets. In the dim hut with the door fast closed, Aderhold and Joan and the babe rested in security. The babe slept; the two lay and listened to the fury without.
“There comes into my mind,” said Joan, “the black sky and the dead air and the lightning and thunder that Sunday in Hawthorn Church.”
“It came to me then, too,” answered Aderhold. “Some finger in this storm strikes the key.”
There was a silence. Both saw Hawthorn Church again and the congregation, and Master Clement in the pulpit. Both felt again the darkness of that storm, the oppression and the sense of catastrophe. In mind again each, the remembered bolt having fallen, left the church and took the homeward road. Joan hurried once more over the sighing grass, past the swaying trees, saw Heron’s cottage and the breaking storm. Aderhold passed again through Hawthorn Forest and crossed the stream before the Oak Grange, reached again the fairy oak and the Grange. He was again in Dorothy’s kitchen, stooping over the fire—in his old room with his unfinished book beneath his hand—upon the stairs—the door was opening—the men to take him.... The blast without the hut changed key. The babe woke, and Joan, lifting her, moved to and fro. When she was hushed and sleeping, the strong echo, the returned emotion had disappeared. They kept silence for a little, and then they talked, not of old things but of the island, of their trees and garden and harm from the hurricane that must be repaired, and then of the village and the children of the village. They were beginning now to teach these.
The storm passed and other storms. There came around again the days of balm, the perfect weather. The child Hope was a year old. Their joy in her was great, indeed. For themselves, they were husband and wife, lovers, friends, fellow scholars, fellow workers, playmates. Their friendship with the Indians was stronger by a year, their service stronger. The old chief came often and often, and the child crowed and laughed and clapped her hands to see him.
The balmy days, the perfect weather passed, and the spring passed. Summer again with its heats and rains was here. With the first great storm, in the hut with the door fast closed, shutting out the swaying and the wind and the hot, rain-filled air, Joan, playing with the little Hope, keeping her from being terrified by the darkness and the rush of sound, suddenly fell quite still where she knelt. She turned her head; her attitude became that of one who was tensely and painfully listening.
When she spoke it was with a strange voice. “Does it come again to you as it did last year?”