And sometimes she would slip out in a canoe, to lie rocking in the lake
swell,--just dreaming, filled with a passive sort of regret. She could
not change things now, but she could not help wishing she could.
Fyfe warned her once about getting offshore in the canoe. Roaring Lake,
pent in the shape of a boomerang between two mountain ranges, was
subject to squalls. Sudden bursts of wind would shoot down its length
like blasts from some monster funnel. Stella knew that; she had seen the
glassy surface torn into whitecaps in ten minutes, but she was not
afraid of the lake nor the lake winds. She was hard and strong. The
open, the clean mountain air, and a measure of activity, had built her
up physically. She swam like a seal. Out in that sixteen-foot Peterboro
she could detach herself from her world of reality, lie back on a
cushion, and lose herself staring at the sky. She paid little heed to
Fyfe's warning beyond a smiling assurance that she had no intention of
courting a watery end.
So one day in mid-July she waved a farewell to Jack Junior, crowing in
his nurse's lap on the bank, paddled out past the first point to the
north, and pillowing her head on a cushioned thwart, gave herself up to
dreamy contemplation on the sky. There was scarce a ripple on the lake.
A faint breath of an offshore breeze fanned her, drifting the canoe at a
snail's pace out from land. Stella luxuriated in the quiet afternoon. A
party of campers cruising the lake had tarried at the bungalow till
after midnight.
Pages:
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167