East Angels Part 71

She had taken off her hat, and thrown it down upon the cloak beside her.

"It's so oppressively warm in here," she said.

It was not oppressively warm--not warmer than a June night at the North. But the air was perfectly still, and so sweet that it was enervating.

The forest grew denser along this third lane as they advanced. The trees stood nearer together, and silver moss now began to hang down in long, filmy veils, thicker and thicker, from all the branches. Mixed with the moss, vines showed themselves in strange convolutions, they went up out of sight; in girth they were as large as small trees; they appeared to have not a leaf, but to be dry, naked, chocolate-brown growths, twisting themselves about hither and thither for their own entertainment.

This was the appearance below. But above, there was another story to tell; for here were interminable flat beds of broad green leaves, spread out over the outside of the roof of foliage--leaves that belonged to these same naked coiling growths below; the vines had found themselves obliged to climb to the very top in order to get a ray of suns.h.i.+ne for their greenery.

For there was no sky for anybody in the Monnlungs; the deep solid roof of interlocked branches stretched miles long, miles wide, like a close tight cover, over the entire place. The general light of day came filtering through, dyed with much green, quenched into blackness at the ends of the vistas; but actual sunbeams never came, never gleamed, year in year out, across the clear darkness of the broad water floor.

The water on this floor was always pellucid; whether it was the deep current of the main channel, or the shallower tide that stood motionless over all the rest of the expanse, no where was there the least appearance of mud; the lake and the streams, red-brown in hue, were as clear as so much fine wine; the tree trunks rose cleanly from this transparent tide, their huge roots could be seen coiling on the bottom much as the great vines coiled in the air above. These gray-white bald cypresses had a monumental aspect, like the columns of a Gothic cathedral, as they rose, erect and branchless, disappearing above in the mist of the moss. The moss presently began to take on an additional witchery by becoming decked with flowers; up to a certain height these flowers had their roots in the earth; but above these were other blossoms--air-plants, some vividly tinted, flaring, and gaping, others so small and so flat on the moss that they were like the embroidered flowers on lace, only they were done in colors.

"I detest this moss," said Margaret, as it grew thicker and thicker, so that there was nothing to be seen but the silver webs; "I feel strangled in it,--suffocated."

"Oh, but it's beautiful," said Winthrop. "Don't you see the colors it takes on? Gray, then silver, then almost pink as we pa.s.s; then gray and ghostly again."

For all answer she called her husband's name. She had called it in this way at intervals ever since they entered the swamp.

"The light we carry penetrates much farther than your voice," Winthrop remarked.

"I want him to know who it is."

"Oh, he'll know--such a devoted wife! Who else could it be?"

After a while the lane made a bend, and led them away from the moss; the canoe, turning to the right, left behind it the veiled forest, white and motionless. Margaret drew a long breath, she shook herself slightly, like a person who has emerged.

"You have on your jewels again," he said, as the movement caused the torch-light to draw a gleam from something in her hair.

She put up her hand as if she had forgotten what was there. "Jewels?

Only a gold arrow." She adjusted it mechanically.

"Jewels enough on your hands, then. You didn't honor _us_ with a sight of them--while you were at East Angels, I mean."

"I don't care for them; I put them on this morning before I started, because Lanse likes them."

"So do I. Unwillingly, you also please me; of course I never dreamed that I should have so much time to admire them--parading by torch-light in this way through a great mora.s.s."

She did not answer.

"They bring you out, you know, in spite of yourself--drag you out, if you like better; they show what you might be, if you would ever--let yourself go."

"Let myself go? You use strange expressions."

"A man isn't responsible for what he says in here."

"You say that a second time! You know there was no other way; the only hope of getting Lanse home before the storm was to start at once."

"The storm--to be sure. I don't believe it ever storms in here."

She turned towards him. "You _know_ I had to come."

"I know you thought so; you thought we should find Lanse sitting encamped on two cypress knees, with the wreck of his canoe for a seat.

We should dawn upon him like comets. And he would say, 'How long you've been! It's precious damp in here, you know!'"

She turned impatiently towards the channel again.

"Don't demand too much, Margaret," he went on. "Jesting's safe, at any rate. Sympathy I haven't got--sympathy for this expedition of yours into this jungle at this time of night."

She had now recovered her composure. "So long as you paddle the boat, sympathy isn't necessary."

"Oh, I'll paddle! But I shall have to paddle forever, we shall never get out. We've come to an antediluvian forest--don't you see? a survival.

But _we_ sha'n't survive. They'll write our biographies; I was wondering the other day if there was any other kind of literature so completely composed of falsehoods, owing to half being kept back, as biographies; I decided that there _was_ one other--autobiographies."

On both sides of them now the trees were, in girth, enormous; the red light, gleaming out fitfully, did not seem to belong to them or to their torches, but to be an independent glow, coming from no one knew where.

"If we had the grace to have any imagination left in this bicycle century of ours," remarked Winthrop, "we should certainly be expecting to see some mammoth water creature, fifty feet long, lifting a flabby head here. For my own part, I am afraid my imagination, never very brilliant, is defunct; the most I can do is to think of the thousands of snakes there must be, squirming about under all this water,--not prehistoric at all, nor mammoths, but just nice natural every-day little moccasins, say about seven feet long."

Margaret shuddered.

He stopped his banter, his voice changed. "Do let me take you home," he urged. "You're tired out; give this thing up."

"I am not tired."

"You have been tired to the verge of death for months!"

"You know nothing about that," she said, coldly.

"Yes, I do. I have seen your face, and I know its expressions now; I didn't at first, but now I do. There's no use in your trying to deceive me Margaret, I know what your life is; remember, Lanse told me everything."

"That was long ago."

"What do you mean?" He leaned forward and grasped her arm as though he would make her turn.

For a moment she did not reply. Then, "A great deal may have happened since then," she said.

"I don't believe you!" He dropped her arm. "You say that to stop me, keep me back; you are afraid of me!" He took up his paddle again.

"Yes, I am afraid." Then, putting a little note of contempt into her voice: "And wasn't I right to be afraid?" she added. She drew the arm he had touched close to her waist, and held it there.

"No!" answered Winthrop, loudly and angrily; "you were completely wrong." He sent the canoe forward with rapid strokes.

They went to the end of the lane, then returned to the main channel, still in silence. But here it became necessary again for Margaret to give directions.

"Go as far as that pool of knees," she began; "then turn to the right."

"You are determined to keep on?"

"I must; that is, I must if you will take me."