"How old was he?"
"Just seven... and an only child. They say his poor ma is plumb distracted. All the Malvern Point men have been s'arching for him for two days, and not a trace of him kin they discover."
"What can have happened to him!" said Emily, pale with horror.
"It's a mystery. Some think he fell off the wharf at the Point... it was only about a quarter of a mile from the house and he used to like sitting there and watching the boats. But nobody saw anything of him 'round the wharf or the bridge that morning. There's a lot of marshland west of the Bradshaw farm, full of bogs and pools. Some think he must have wandered there and got lost and perished... ye remember Tuesday night was terrible cold. THAT'S where his mother thinks he is... and if you ask ME, she's right. If he'd been anywhere else he'd have been found by the s'arching parties. They've combed the country."
The story haunted Emily all the rest of the day and she walked under its shadow. Anything like that always took almost a morbid hold on her. She could not bear the thought of the poor mother at Malvern Point. And the little lad... where was he? Where had he been the previous night when she had lain in the ecstasy of wild, free hours? That night had not been cold... but Wednesday night had. And she shuddered as she recalled Tuesday night, when a bitter autumnal windstorm had raged till dawn, with showers of hail and stinging rain. Had he been out in that... the poor lost baby?
"Oh, I can't BEAR it!" she moaned.
"It's dreadful," agreed Ilse, looking rather sick, "but WE can't do anything. There's no use in thinking of it. Oh"... suddenly Ilse stamped her foot... "I believe Father used to be right when he didn't believe in God. Such a hideous thing as THIS... how could it happen if there IS a God... a DECENT God, anyway?"
"God hadn't anything to do with THIS," said Emily. "You KNOW the Power that made last night couldn't have brought about this monstrous thing."
"Well, He didn't prevent it," retorted Ilse... who was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.
"Little Allan Bradshaw may be found yet... he MUST be," exclaimed Emily.
"He won't be found alive," stormed Ilse. "No, don't talk to me about God. And don't talk to me of this. I've got to forget it... I'll go crazy if I don't."
Ilse put the matter out of her mind with another stamp of her foot and Emily tried to. She could not quite succeed but she forced herself to concentrate superficially on the business of the day, though she knew the horror lurked in the back of her consciousness. Only once did she really forget it... when they came around a point on the Malvern River Road and saw a little house built in the cup of a tiny bay, with a steep grassy hill rising behind it. Scattered over the hill were solitary, beautifully shaped young fir-trees like little green, elongated pyramids. No other house was in sight. All about it was a lovely autumnal solitude of grey, swift-running, windy river, and red, spruce-fringed points.
"That house belongs to me," said Emily.
Ilse stared.
"To you?"
"Yes. Of course, I don't OWN it. But haven't you sometimes seen houses that you knew belonged to you no matter who owned them?"
No, Ilse hadn't. She hadn't the least idea what Emily meant.
"I know who owns that house," she said. "It's Mr. Scobie of Kingsport. He built it for a summer cottage. I heard Aunt Net talking of it the last time I was in Wiltney. It was finished a few weeks ago. It's a pretty little house, but too small for me. I like a big house... I don't want to feel cramped and crowded... especially in summer."
"It's hard for a big house to have any personality," said Emily thoughtfully. "But little houses almost always have. That house is full of it. There isn't a line or a corner that isn't eloquent, and those casement windows are lovable... especially that little one high up under the eaves over the front door. It's absolutely smiling at me. Look at it glowing like a jewel in the sunshine out of the dark shingle setting. The little house is greeting us. You dear friendly thing, I love you... I understand you. As Old Kelly would say, 'may niver a tear be shed under your roof.' The people who are going to live in you must be nice people or they would never have THOUGHT you. If I lived in you, beloved, I'd always stand at that western window at evening to wave to some one coming home. That is just exactly what that window was built for... a frame for love and welcome."
"When you get through with talking to your house we'd better hurry on," warned Ilse. "There's a storm coming up. See those clouds... and those sea-gulls. Gulls never come up this far except before a storm. It's going to rain any minute. We'll not sleep on a haystack to-night, Friend Emily."
Emily loitered past the little house and looked at it lovingly as long as she could. It WAS such a dear little place with its dubbed-off gables and rich, brown shingle tints, and its general intimate air of sharing mutual jokes and secrets. She turned around half a dozen times to look upon it, as they climbed the steep hill, and when at last it dipped below sight she sighed.
"I hate to leave it. I have the oddest feeling, Ilse, that it's CALLING to me... that I ought to go back to it."
"Don't be silly," said Ilse impatiently. "There... it's sprinkling now! If you hadn't poked so long looking at your blessed little hut we'd have been out on the main road now, and near shelter. Wow, but it's cold!"
"It's going to be a dreadful night," said Emily in a low voice. "Oh, Ilse, where is that poor little lost boy to-night? I wish I knew if they had found him."
"Don't!" said Ilse savagely, "Don't say another word about him. It's awful... it's hideous... but what can WE do?"
"Nothing. That's the dreadful thing about it. It seems wicked to go on about our own business, asking for subscriptions, when that child is not found."
By this time they had reached the main road. The rest of the afternoon was not pleasant. Stinging showers came at intervals: between them the world was raw and damp and cold, with a moaning wind that came in ominous sighing gusts under a leaden sky. At every house where they called they were reminded of the lost baby, for there were only women to give or refuse subscriptions. The men were all away searching for him.
"Though it isn't any use NOW," said one woman gloomily, "except that they may find his little body. He can't have lived this long. I jest can't eat or cook for thinking of his poor mother. They say she's nigh crazy... I don't wonder."
"They say old Margaret McIntyre is taking it quite calmly," said an older woman, who was piecing a log-cabin quilt by the window. "I'd have thought she'd be wild, too. She seemed real fond of little Allan."
"Oh, Margaret McIntyre has never got worked up about anything for the past five years... ever since her own son Neil was frozen to death in the Klondyke. Seems as if her feelings were frozen then, too... she's been a little mad ever since. SHE won't worry none over this... she'll just smile and tell you she spanked the King."
Both women laughed. Emily, with the story-teller's nose, scented a story instantly, but though she would fain have lingered to hunt it down Ilse hustled her away.
"We MUST get on, Emily, or we'll never reach St. Clair before night."
They soon realized that they were not going to reach it. At sunset St. Clair was still three miles away and there was every indication of a wild evening.
"We can't get to St. Clair, that's certain," said Ilse. "It's going to settle down for a steady rain and it'll be as black as a million black cats in a quarter of an hour. We'd better go to that house over there and ask if we can stay all night. It looks snug and respectable... though it certainly is the jumping-off place."
The house at which Ilse pointed... an old whitewashed house with a grey roof... was set on the face of a hill amid bright green fields of clover aftermath. A wet red road wound up the hill to it. A thick grove of spruces shut it off from the gulf shore, and beyond the grove a tiny dip in the land revealed a triangular glimpse of misty, white-capped, grey sea. The near brook valley was filled with young spruces, dark-green in the rain. The grey clouds hung heavily over it. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds in the west for one magical moment. The hill of clover meadows flashed instantly into incredibly vivid green. The tri-angle of sea shimmered into violet. The old house gleamed like white marble against the emerald of its hilly background, and the inky black sky over and around it.