“Freedom is a glorious thing!”
Fay started. Was that Val speaking? The voice seemed to come from that bright-eyed, smiling form that stood beside her.
“You forged your own chains.”
Yes yes, that Val’s voice, she was certain.
“And must wear them,” seemed to say a solemn voice that was not Val’s.
“And can break them,” finished Val.
“Help me! help me!” moaned Fay, covering her ears with both hands to shut out the bewildering voices.
Val took those hands in his. “Ma mignonne,” he said, “look ahead. Some day, and a day not very far off, all our sweet, stolen intercourse must come to an end. There will have to be said a long last goodbye, our hands will let go, the world will come in between.”
“Oh, Val, death were better than that!” she said brokenly. “If there must come an end to all that makes our lives worth having, let us end our lives also and agree to die together!”
“Why not?” answered Val promptly. “To live together would be better, but if that cannot be, why then I agree and say let us die together.”
“Once,” Fay went on, a little unsteadily, as if uncertain whither her words were leading her, “I heard of a man and a woman who loved each other just as you and I do, and who agreed that chance, not will, should decide their future for them.”
“By the ‘hazard of the die?’ ” said Val, catching at her meaning; “I have no dice-box here, ma mignonne.”
“No! in this way,” said Fay, still in a low, unsteady tone. “The girl, like me, wavered, she did not dare say ‘Yes,’ she could not—no, could not say ‘No.’ They were riding along a country road in France and it was getting night. They threw the reins on their horses’ necks, and swore an oath to each other that they would go wherever their horses took them and accept just whatever fate this should bring them to.”
“No doubt the man thought his horse would lead, and take them straight home to his stables.”
“Perhaps. But it did not. The horses, instead, rambled on through fields and dark lanes, and at last led them into a part of the country that was flooded—into a swollen stream—and both man and woman were drowned.”
“Possibly that was the best thing that could happen to them both. When Fate is iron and your life is hopelessly ruined, it is better by far to end it or to have it ended for you,” he answered recklessly.
“Val,” the name was whispered very softly, very sweetly; “what would most likely happen if you were to push this boat away from the shore and let it drift?”
“Let it drift! Well, it would go out of the loch with the tide, of course; but what would happen afterwards would depend on so many things on the currents, for instance. You know outside the loch there is a perfect network of ‘shallows and narrows’ among the islands. If a gale sprang up, it might be a case of a boat floating bottom upwards before day dawned.”
Fay looked at him wistfully.
“Val,” she said softly and sweetly still, “would you be willing to put our fate to such a test as that? And would you swear to me that you would accept, without resistance, just whatever the dawn might bring. If it brought us death, even, would you accept it without a word of reproach—”
“My darling!” interrupted Val, springing to his feet. “I’ll swear it a thousand times over, if you, on your part, will do the same, and swear to accept whatever the dawn may bring, even supposing it finds us in sight of Mull and Archie’s yacht!”
And this, as he said the words, seemed to him a not unlikely contingency.
Fay, perhaps, read his thoughts.
“I ought to tell you,” she said, the wistful look lingering still in her eyes, “that old Angus—Euan’s steward—who is noted all over the island for his weather-wisdom, told me last night that this hot weather was bound to end in a storm before another forty-eight hours had passed; the moon, he said, had gone down with a double halo round it, and that was a certain sign of wind and foul weather.”
“Let it come! What does it matter, so long as you and I can face it together? Now, Fay, put your hand in mine, and let us swear to abide by whatever decision the dawn may bring—life together if it bring us life, death together if it bring us death.”
So these two, hand in hand, looking up to the dark heavens, swore their strange oath.
Val tossed one oar out on to the beach, the other he kept to push the boat off shore with. Then, refusing to allow Fay to get out of the boat, he dragged it down to the receding tide, averring that her light weight could make no possible difference to a man’s arm.
And just as he had sprung into the boat and was pushing off, a strange thing happened—a long, mournful cry, a sort of eked-out whistle in a minor key, sounded twice across the silent loch.
Fay started, holding up a warning finger.
“Listen, it is a curlew,” she said. “The people here look upon its cry as a death warning if it comes after sunset. They have a rhyme:—
‘If the whaup whistles thrice after set of sun,
A life will be ended ere day has begun.’
Oh! pray listen—don’t let the keel grate again.”
Val paused, oar in hand. Fay’s face seemed to grow rigid with the strain upon her listening powers.
“Well,” he said at length, breaking the silence, “so far, so good; two whistles evidently stand
