She knew of the ruthlessness of Henry's business life; he had forced down, overcome all who opposed him, and he had made full use for his own advantage of other men's mistakes and erroneous beliefs and opinions. If he had used her belief in Uncle Benny's death to hasten their marriage, it was something which others—particularly she—could pardon and accept.
If she was drawn to him for his strength and dominance, which sometimes ran into ruthlessness, she had no right to complain if he turned it thus upon her.
She had made Alan promise to write her, if he was not to return, regarding what he learned; and a letter came to her on the fourth day from him in Manitowoc. The postoffice employees had no recollection, he said, of the person who had mailed the package; it simply had been dropped by some one into the receptacle for mailing packages of that sort. They did not know the handwriting upon the wrapper, which he had taken with him; nor was it known at the bank or in any of the stores where he had shown it. The shoe dealer had no recollection of that particular box. Alan, however, was continuing his inquiries.
In September he reported in a brief, totally impersonal note, that he was continuing with the investigations he had been making previous to his visit to Harbor Point; this came from Sarnia, Ontario. In October he sent a different address where he could be found in case anything more came, such as the box which had come to Constance in August.
She wrote to him in reply each time; in lack of anything more important to tell him, she related some of her activities and inquired about his. After she had written him thus twice, he replied, describing his life on the boats pleasantly and humorously; then, though she immediately replied, she did not hear from him again.
She had returned to Chicago late in September and soon was very busy with social affairs, benefits, and bazaars which were given that fall for the Red Cross and the different Allied causes; a little later came a series of the more personal and absorbing luncheons and dances and dinners for her and for Henry, since their engagement, which long had been taken for granted by every one who knew them, was announced now. So the days drifted into December and winter again.
The lake, beating against the esplanade across the Drive before Constance's windows, had changed its color; it had no longer its autumn blue and silver; it was gray, sluggish with floating needle-points of ice held in solution. The floe had not yet begun to form, but the piers and breakwaters had white ice caps frozen from spray—harbingers of the closing of navigation. The summer boats, those of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman with the rest, were being tied up. The birds were gone; only the gulls remained—gray, clamorous shapes circling and calling to one another across the water. Early in December the newspapers announced the closing of the locks at the "Soo" by the ice.
That she had not heard from Alan was beginning to recur to Constance with strange insistence. He must have left the boats by now, unless he had found work on one of those few which ran through the winter.
He and his occupation, instead of slipping from her thoughts with time, absorbed her more and more. Soon after he had gone to Manitowoc and he had written that he had discovered nothing, she had gone to the office of the Petoskey paper and, looking back over the twenty-year-old files, she had read the account of the loss of the Miwaka, with all on board. That fate was modified only by the Indian Drum beating short. So one man from the Miwaka had been saved somehow, many believed. If that could have been, there was, or there had been, some one alive after the ship "disappeared"—Alan's word went through her with a chill—who knew what had happened to the ship and who knew of the fate of his shipmates.
She had gone over the names again; if there was meaning in the Drum, who was the man who had been saved and visited that fate on Benjamin Corvet? Was it Luke? There was no Luke named among the crew; but such men often went by many names. If Luke had been among the crew of the Miwaka and had brought from that lost ship something which threatened Uncle Benny that, at least, explained Luke.