THE VISION IN THE HUT
There is, perhaps, no more enthralling sound than the far but sure
approach of someone who comes unlooked-for to a lonely place. The two
men who were keeping vigil became certain that travelers were ascending
the steep zig-zags of Deer. They looked at one another in apprehensive
silence, and went softly out to that side of the house nearest the road.
The young moon had set, and there was cloud overhead. Almost an hour's
journey below them the creak of wheel, the sound of hoof, came faint but
nearer. The two house dogs stood by the men, a growl in their throats.
Bertha came downstairs and out to them, a shawl over her head. The
mountain nights had been growing colder; the air was bleak and dry.
"Hermie is terribly ill," she said. "She has cried till the pain in her
head is anguish--and who can possibly be coming?"
Then she turned indignantly to Alden. "Is this some plan of your
arranging?"
Alden denied in dispirited tones, and suggested that perhaps some
travelers had lost their way.
"People don't usually climb a mountain by mistake," she retorted.
"There are two horses--and two men talking--and wheels," said Durgan,
slowly reckoning up the sounds he heard.
"Go in, and take the dogs," said Alden to Bertha. "We will go down to
the mine and meet them, so that Hermione need not be disturbed."
"You need not be so careful to protect her now," she said hardly. "She
is in too great pain to care what happens."
Then Durgan was striding down the trail, and Alden hopping nimbly over
the rocks beside him.
"The last visitors who rode here through the night brought handcuffs,"
said Durgan grimly.
He could not divest himself of the idea that some armed fate was close
upon them all.
He lit his lantern, and kindled a fire of sticks in the stove of his
hut. Alden, who was shivering with cold, warmed himself. The travelers
were now resting their horses a half-mile below. The keen air, the new
excitement, were a spur to the mind of the weary lawyer. He began to
talk with renewed melancholy, and a persistence that wearied Durgan's
ears.
"So far, we are not only without proof, but without reasonable
hypothesis. The cleverest detective in New York tells me that Beardsley
left New York and cannot be traced. When we find him, we shall only
have, as means to incriminate him, the word of a dead negro, whose mind
was obviously failing when he gave his evidence, and one letter
which----"
Durgan's impatience was intolerable. He went out on the dark road. He
thought of that other night, gorgeous in its whiteness, when the full
moon had looked down on the beautiful bronze form of the murdered woman
and on a strolling, dandified valet, of whose portrait Durgan remembered
every detail. He had seen him in the glamor of the silvered avenue; and
his silken hair and long whiskers, the expanse of shirt-front, the flash
of false jewels, and his mad utterance, which was now gradually taking
the form of truth, lived again in his memory. He remembered, too, the
crimson dawn in which he had witnessed Adam's passionate grief, and his
own rage of indignation when the next night had brought with it, on this
same road, the worst of insults to taint that grief.
The cause of all that coil of evil and pain had been the quiet lady,
whom they had just left with the intense loneliness of her secret, shut
off in her anguish from sister and lover. For her sake, it seemed, Eve
had been killed, and Adam had wept, and the vain serving-man had used
his last vital powers to save her from a world's reproach. As yet there
was no outcome of it all, except dissension and misery.
The horses below began to move again. Durgan went in to Alden. They
sometimes heard a thin, impatient voice raised high in questioning
tones, and answers given. When the horses had passed the last turn
below, the words of the thin voice could be heard clearly.
"Drivah, what is this light?" There was a slight drawl and an assumption
of importance.
"I think I have heard that voice before," said the lawyer slowly,
listening; "but I cannot tell where."
"Is this the top of the mountain, drivah? Is this the house?"
"I can't be sure, but I think I know it," commented the lawyer again.
"Do you recognize it?"
"No, I do not."
Durgan stood out on the road.
"Then drive on. If this is not the summit house, drive on, drivah.
Don't stop." There was a note of alarm in the thin tone.
Durgan's lantern flashed its light upon horses and driver and
old-fashioned surrey from the hotel at Hilyard. The driver was a silent
man, well known on the road. Within, his keen, facile face bent forward
in ill temper and alarm, sat an emaciated man, wrapped in a rich fur
coat and propped with cushions.
The driver had so far answered in lazy monosyllables. Now, on
recognizing Durgan, he pulled up the carriage. The thin-voiced traveler
addressed Durgan.
"I am going to the boarding-house of a Miss Smith. I understand there is
a lawyer there, the best in the State. I will not detain you, sir. Go
on, drivah; we are much too late now."
The owner of the voice leaned back in the surrey. He was evidently
alarmed by his surroundings; but a stranger might well be excused for
showing some dislike of the long, steep road, the extreme solitude, and
the sudden appearance of a man who barred the way.
Durgan turned his light on the face of the driver. "What's the meaning
of this?" he asked sternly.
The man returned his inspection with a queer, sphinx-like look that had
in it something of the nature of a grin and a wink, but gave no
indication as to the cause of his humor. He grumbled as he clumsily
tumbled off his seat. Then, opening the surrey door, he remarked, in a
casual tone, that his horses could go no further.
"If this 'ere gentleman doesn't keep summer hotels and big-bug lawyers
handy, I dunno anyone as does 'bout here. As for Miss Smith's house,
we'll have a rest first."
Again the face of the invalid, keen and drawn by pain or passion, was
thrust forward from the shadow of the carriage. His voice was shrill
enough to sound at first like a shriek. "Look here, my man; you needn't
suppose the money I've got to pay you is in my pockets. It's in Hilyard,
where you'll get all the currency you want when you've done my work; but
you'll gain nothing by stopping here."
On seeing Durgan more clearly he looked about him in absolute terror,
grasping the rug that impeded his movements as if wondering only how to
fling himself out of their reach, or else not knowing whether to argue
or ingratiate.
The driver held the door, taking the volley of weak-voiced profanity in
the passive way common to the region.
Durgan's amusement at the driver's mastery, and at being himself so
obviously mistaken for a robber, was overlaid by astonishment and
curiosity.
"I am working a small mica mine close by. You can come into my camp to
rest and get warm if you wish to." He spoke to the agitated traveler in
the low, haughty tone that usually won for him the immediate respect of
those inferior in social position. But the traveler only answered in a
more imperious tone.
"Who are you, sir? Is this Bear Mountain? I was told it was. This man,"
he cried, pointing to the driver, "engaged to bring me to a mountain
called Bear and a house kept by a woman called Smith. We were
delayed--horribly delayed--by one of the horses casting a shoe. I ask
you, sir, what does this man mean by turning me out at a mica mine? What
does he mean?"
"I should like to know," said Durgan. "You have evidently been misled."
The driver here left the open carriage door, and began busying himself
about the harness.
Again suggesting that the traveler might take advantage of his fire if
he chose, Durgan turned back to his camp.
Alden stood outside, unseen from the carriage in the black shadow of the
hut. He had the baffled air of a hound who, thinking he has found a
scent, loses it again. He shook his head; his eyes contracted in
concentrated attention. "I've no idea who he is; but I think he is
acting a part."
The stranger now proved himself a man of the world by descending from
the carriage with some polite expressions of relief at obtaining rest
from the intolerable road, and gratitude for Durgan's hospitality.
He was of middle height, and stooped as he walked. His traveling coat
was of the richest, the muffling of the fur collar and the slouch of the
warm felt hat seemed habitual to him. In spite of them he shivered in
the mountain night.
He went close to the fire, unbuttoned his coat to let the warmth reach
him, and took out a card-case.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to extract a card," said he, handing it
to Durgan. "My fingers are numb."
He took off his gloves, and chafed his hands before the blaze. He took
off his hat, holding its inside to the fire to warm. He had the
appearance of a man of perhaps fifty, with face withered and sunburnt.
His hair was black, his mustache waxed, his beard pointed. He looked
like a fashion plate from Paris, handsome in his way, but his skin and
eyes gave the impression of pain impatiently borne. The sense of being
an aristocrat was written large all over him. His cat's-eye pin, the
cutting of his seal ring, answered true to the glare of the firelight.
Having shown himself, as it would appear accidentally, he put on his hat
and buttoned up his collar.
Durgan took a card from a well-filled and well-worn card-case and read
it aloud, "Mr. Adolphus Courthope." It gave as an address a club in New
Orleans.
"I heard a few days ago that a namesake of mine, a scoundrelly fellow,
whose mother was one of our niggers, is lying in jail at Hilyard,
charged with murder. Of course, I have no responsibility for the
fellow--never saw him till to-day. Still, his mother was my
foster-sister, the daughter of the good old mammy who nursed me. She
gave him my name, and--damn it--I don't care to have the fellow publicly
hanged. Seems in a bad way now with lung trouble; but he'll
revive--that's the way with these cases."
Durgan disliked this man, but was surprised to find that he pitied him
still more. The terror that he had just shown, the illusive resemblance
in his eyes to someone--perhaps someone more worthy of pity--the very
disparity of physical size and strength, all inspired in Durgan an
unreasoning instinct to protect him.
The other went on. "Only reached Hilyard to-day. The poor fellow would
have it that there was a woman called Smith, who kept a small summer
hotel, or something of the kind, located here, who alone could give the
evidence that would get him off; and that there was a clever lawyer
boarding with her who would take up the case on her evidence. Would have
it there was nothing for it but for me to come straight on here. I'm not
the man to give up what I've undertaken, but if I'd known what the roads
were like, confound it if I'd not have stayed in New Orleans. I say this
to you, sir, because I see you are a man of my own class--damn it, there
are few enough of us left."
Certain now that this man had been sent by 'Dolphus, Durgan perceived
that till now he had had some vague hope that 'Dolphus, as some _deus ex
machina_, would contrive to trick Beardsley himself into their power.
The production of this man, beguiled hither by a lie, was evidently the
mulatto's supreme effort; but this man, whoever he was, was certainly
not Charlton Beardsley, for however accomplished an actor he might be,
Durgan felt certain he had never been a man of plebeian origin.
"Is there no hotel that I can sleep in to-night?" asked the other
shortly. "Has that cursed nigger not told me the truth?"
"Not precisely. Had he any reason for endeavoring to mislead you?"
"Well, I should rather think not. Trial coming on in two days. If he had
his senses about him, he'd go only the quickest road to success."
This sounded genuine.
"And the driver brought you all this way and did not enlighten you?"
said Durgan.
"Great God!" cried the other. "What could they mean?" And in his tone
vibrated returning fear.
"_I have_ a friend here--the lawyer to whom you are sent; and there _is_
a Miss Smith living higher up, but it is a private house."
Again the stranger overcame the fear he had a second time betrayed. "Oh,
thanks awfully. That is all that matters. Has your friend turned in for
the night?"
Aware that Alden had been looking and listening through the chinks of
the hut, Durgan wandered out in a slow detour among the trees, and
brought Alden back with him. When they entered, the stranger was not
looking toward the door.
"This is Mr. Theodore Alden, of New York," said Durgan; and altho the
visitor only appeared to indolently turn his head and bow, Durgan felt
sure that his whole body started and shrank under the heavy folds of his
long coat.
"Mr. Courthope has come," began Durgan, and then, with indifferent
manner, he repeated the story of Mr. Courthope of New Orleans. He could
see that Alden had as yet no scent.
"Are you aware," began Alden, "that the other negro apprehended for this
murder is being protected by his late owner upon the same grounds? It is
not a usual proceeding; I might almost say--speaking from a wide
knowledge of the South since the war--a novel proceeding. To have it
repeated is a novel coincidence."
There was a little silence in which Durgan and Alden both observed the
stranger narrowly, and neither felt sure whether his pause was caused by
the inattentive habits of illness, or whether he was silent from
annoyance. It would appear to have been the first, for, after again
warming his legs and again rubbing his hands before the blaze, he lifted
his head as if he had just observed that he had not replied.
"I beg your pardon--a bad habit of mine, forgetting to answer. As to
coincidence, it isn't coincidence at all. My nigger writes to me what a
Mr. Durgan is doing for the other nigger, and sends me a local paper,
saying in effect how much better the Durgans are than the Courthopes. I
acted on impulse--we Courthopes always do. It's the way of the world,
you know--we should never do anything if it wasn't for trying to show
that we are as good, or one better, than someone else. But if I'd known
that folks here all lived on different mountains, I'd have let the
Durgans have the field. Devilish cold at this altitude."
As he turned from the fire to speak he shivered, pushed up his collar
still higher, and pulled his hat down almost to his eyes. He turned
again to the fire. "Desperately cold up here," he repeated. "What's the
name of this mountain?" he suddenly demanded.
They told him.
"'Deer Mountain.' I thought the driver said 'Bear Mountain.' I'm sure
the nigger told me to come up 'Bear.'"
"There is a peak of that name further off," said Alden.
"Ah, well, I must say I am relieved to find I've not come on a fool's
errand, but have achieved my purpose and discovered our friend, Mr.
Alden, altho on another mountain. Odd place this, where mountains have
to be reckoned like streets or squares. Well, Mr. Alden, my business is
just this: I'm willing to pay anything in reason, and you can use
bribery and corruption, or talent, or villainy, or anything else you
like as long as you get my man off. There is my card; and if you'll
agree to undertake it, I'd better drive back to the last village and try
to get a bed."
He did not take a step toward the door as he spoke, but Durgan believed
that he would fain have done so.
Alden was standing very square, alert, and upright. "Mr. Courthope, this
is a very strange thing. There is nothing that Adolphus knows better
than that I believe him to be guilty, and will not defend him."
The stranger expressed astonishment in word and action. He moved back a
few steps, and sat down weakly on the bench by the wall; but Durgan
observed that he thus neared the door, tho appearing to settle himself
for conversation.
"You are scarcely a hundred yards from the place where this 'Dolphus
stabbed a beautiful quadroon woman, and left her dead," said Durgan.
"She was found just here at----"
"How ghastly!" interrupted the other in unfeigned distress. "I confess
to being afraid of ghosts--horribly afraid. But, gentlemen, I beg you
to think what an awful business it would be to have that poor nigger
hanged."
There was no doubt as to the truth of the emotion he now displayed, any
more than in the matter of his former terror.
"It isn't fair, you know," he said; "for the punishment is out of all
proportion to the crime, even if he is guilty. To be killed suddenly,
when you are not expecting it, you know, is no suffering at all--nothing
to compare with sitting for weeks expecting a horrible and deliberate
end. Then the disgrace, the execration of the public." His thin voice
had risen now in actual terror at the picture he had conjured up. "Save
the poor devil if you can." His eyes turned instinctively toward
Durgan's. "Sir, I do not know who you are, but I recognize a man of
feeling and of honor. I protest the very thought of such a fate for this
poor fellow appals me. I beseech you, have pity on the poor wretch, as
you would desire pity in--in--your worst extremity."
He rose after he had spoken, moving about restlessly, as if in the
attempt to control himself. His unfeigned appeal seemed to touch even
Alden. His manner to the man suddenly became kinder.
"There is one thing that I can do for you," said the lawyer. "If you
will write a short letter formally empowering me to find better counsel
for the defence, I will--telegraph to a man I know in Atlanta to
undertake it. Of course you must formally authorize me."
"Certainly; certainly. I quite understand," said the stranger eagerly,
coming toward the table where Alden was arranging paper.
"What's that?" he said sharply, as he sat down.
There was a scrambling upon the hill above, in which Durgan recognized
the well-known run of Bertha with her dogs in leash. He determined at
once to meet her and send her back, altho he hardly knew why.
He said to Courthope evasively, "There are cattle grazing on all these
hills."
At the moment he felt reproach for the lie, because the stranger seemed
to trust him implicitly, for he seated himself and took the pen.
Alden surreptitiously kicked the damper of the small stove, increasing
its heat, which was already great. He said to the stranger, who sat with
his back to it, "You will catch cold in driving if you do not open your
coat here."
Durgan left Alden to put the stranger through his paces, and went
hastily round the ledge of the mine and swung himself up to the trail,
meaning to intercept Bertha before she came near. He had not correctly
estimated her pace, for when he emerged on the path she had just passed
over it. He could only follow her, as the girl descended by a light jump
to the rock platform.
She was about forty feet from the door of the hut when she stood still
and, turning, spoke: "My sister has a terrible attack of neuralgia. If
the carriage is going back--we must send for the doctor. Who--who is
it?"
In the next few confused moments Durgan was promising to send the
message, seeking words to persuade her to return, and giving some answer
to her question; while Bertha was trying to hold the dogs still, and
they, on the scent of strange footsteps, were straining on their leashes
toward the door of the hut.
She was, perhaps, little loth to be pulled a few steps forward so that
she could look in at the open door for herself. The lantern, which
burned full in the face of the stranger, writing at the table, sent a
long, bright stream outwards, in which Bertha now stood framed. In
Durgan's memory afterwards this moment always remained with these two
faces lit up at each end of the beam of light, while all around them was
lost in darkness.
The stranger had thrown back his coat. His face was in clear profile.
Durgan himself was paralyzed by the intensity of emotion which leaped to
Bertha's face. She gave an inarticulate sound of terrified joy, a moan
of heart-rending joy--or was it terror?
The stranger, turning sharply, saw the girl, her face and figure
illumined. His jaw dropped with terror. He stood up abjectly.
She sank to the ground, and Durgan, bending over her, heard her trying
to gasp a word with a wonderful intonation of tenderness and
astonishment. That word was "Father." She tried again and again to speak
it aloud.
She seemed fainting. Instinctively Durgan held the dogs, who broke into
a howl of rage against the abject intruder.
As for the stranger, he appeared to become mad. Alden moved to the door
to detain him, and was caught and thrown into the room as a child would
be cast off by an athlete. The man had fled, and was lost in the gloom
of the forest. He disappeared somewhere between the glow of the carriage
lamps and Durgan's light, rushing down the hill.
Bertha had not wholly fainted. Now she was clinging to the collars of
the dogs with her whole weight, grappling with them on the very floor
of the rock. She was entreating Durgan in almost voiceless whispers to
"Go and bring him back. Go bring him."
Alden, who heard nothing Bertha said, was on the road shouting to the
driver, "The man is mad. He is dangerous. Head him off down the road.
Don't let him escape." The words rang sharp.
That portion of the hill into which the stranger had run was bordered by
the rock precipice, which came up to the road beyond where the carriage
stood.
Alden raised his voice to a reverberating shout, addressing the
fugitive. "Come back. If you don't come back we will loose the dogs."
Durgan was trying to take the furious dogs from the girl, but she would
not relax her hold. She was crying and moaning to the dogs to quiet
them, and entreating Durgan to leave her with wild whispers. "Oh, save
him; for God's sake, save him. Bring him back to me." She ground her
teeth in anger at Alden's shout. "For pity's sake, stop that cruel man
shouting. Call him off," she demanded, as if Alden were a dog; "call him
off."
Durgan followed Alden. "She won't give you the dogs," he said.
"It was the sight of the dogs that frightened him," said Alden. "He is a
maddened criminal, and a very dangerous man, whoever he may be. His
weakness was feigned. He's skulking; but he's as good as caught, for he
can't get over the precipice."
Durgan heard Bertha dragging and coaxing the dogs up the trail. In a few
minutes she would have them shut up. He felt glad of this. In Alden's
anger there was no mercy.
The driver was making torches with sticks, lamp oil, and a bit of rope.
Before long, the three men had a glare which so illumined the wood that
each tree-trunk threw a sharp, black shadow. They distributed the lights
to lessen the shadows. They hunted all the slope between the road and
the rock wall, but the fugitive was not found.
"If he had fallen over we should certainly have heard the fall," they
said.
The silent driver added, "He swore he'd be good for forty dollars if I'd
get him here and back; reckon I ain't the man to lose half a chance of
that. I kep' my ears open; he ain't rolled over."
Book III
Chapter XXXI
A FLASH OF LIGHT
The bank shelved: no one could come on the precipice unwarned. Soon they
found a travelling boot, and after that, at some distance, another. They
felt sure now that the fugitive had climbed one of the trees, throwing
away his boots as far as possible. Looking up, they perceived the
hopelessness, in that case, of their quest. The arms of the forest
spread out above them thick, gnarled, and black with the heaviest
foliage of the year. The flame of their torches glared only on the under
side of the boughs. Light and shadow were thrown in fantastic patches
into the higher canopies, where also the lurid smoke of their torches
curled.
They went back to the road; the small, neat New Yorker tripping first,
his torch dying, the boots of the fugitive in his other hand; the
driver, in old, loose coat, striding indolently toward the horses;
Durgan, lingering as he went, with sinewy arm throwing his light high
and looking upward.
Alden examined the boots by the lamp in the hut. "These are New York
boots," he said. Then he turned to the half-written letter on the table.
"This writing I made him do is in a feigned hand." Alden's eyes were
ablaze with angry excitement. "Look!" he cried. In the lining of the
boots he had found a mark in ink. The initials were "J. C. B." "Can he
be Beardsley, masquerading as a Southerner?"
"I begin to think he has done some years of masquerading as Beardsley."
"What do you mean?"
But Durgan went no further. His own uncertainty, Alden's obvious
exhaustion, and the desire to let things sift themselves, kept him
silent.
Something more alert than weary human sense was required for the vigil.
Durgan went to the stable to get the terrier. He purposely took his way
near the window of the sisters, anxious as to the nature of Bertha's
excitement and her sister's illness.
But after passing the tranquil house, he found that Bertha had not
entered it. She still stood outside the locked door of the stable in
which she had chained the dogs. She leaned back against the door,
looking up at the quiet light in her sister's window. Durgan lit a
match, and held it in the pink lantern of his fingers until it was big
enough to give them both a clear momentary view of each other. To his
surprise, Bertha appeared to be in a quiet mood. The spark fell, and
again only her light dress glimmered in the night. The first fine drops
of gathering rain were falling.
He did not like a calm that seemed to him unnatural. He told her of the
watch kept below, and of his errand.
She answered, "I am glad you have come. I don't know how to go to
Hermie. Poor Hermie! How we have wronged her! But I am afraid to tell
her, for it might kill her to-night. It was some cruel plan of Mr.
Alden's, I know. I am afraid to go to her; but I am afraid, too, to
leave her alone as ill as she is. She might die; tho I don't think she
will, because she always seems to have God with her; and, do you know, I
have a queer feeling to-night that God may be here. It would seem
better, of course, if we could all three die to-night; but in that case,
why have we lived to meet again? No; there must be some way out, because
Hermie has prayed so much--prayer must make some difference, don't you
think?"
"I don't like to hear you talking in this mild, reasonable way. Are you
not excited? Why do you not cry?"
"I was so dreadfully excited that I thought I was going mad; and then
seemed to grow all still inside, as if there was no need to be afraid. I
can't explain. The reason I'm talking is that I want you to tell me what
to do. I've told you the danger of telling Hermie, and the danger of not
going to her; and then, too, I want to go down the hill. If I went
alone, he would come to me and speak to me. He must be cold and hungry
and tired. In the old days we never let a draught blow upon him. And he
is so terribly thin, and has done something so dreadful with his hair,
because I suppose he was afraid of being known. I ought to go to him."
"You must not stand here and go on talking like this. You must go at
once into the house and nurse your sister. And you must not tell her
what you are fancying or thinking about. If you do, it will make her
very ill, and it will be your fault. You have wronged her terribly, as
you say. Rouse yourself, and make some amends."
"Well--I will." She began to move with docility, but talked as he walked
with her. "Could you not send Mr. Alden down to the Cove on some
pretence? And then, you know, we could find him, and I could bring him
into the kitchen, at least, and give him warm wine--he used to like warm
wine--and get him to bed without Hermie knowing. Dear Mr. Durgan,
couldn't you do this for Hermie's sake? You know it is what she would
like."
Durgan took her by the arm. "Miss Bertha, you have, perhaps, made a
mistake. It is very easy to make such mistakes under excitement such as
you have passed through to-night. That excitement has almost killed your
sister, and it has probably made you fanciful."
"Yes--but then, how was it _he_ knew _me_?"
"He saw the dogs. He may have supposed they were brought to seize him,
and so he bolted."
She replied in the same voice as before. "But then, this explains
Hermie's secret. What else could? You know we said nothing could, but
this does."
Durgan felt that, perhaps, her mind had become a blank, and her voice
was answering with his own thoughts, which within him were holding the
same dialog.
"What are you saying?" he said roughly. "How can your father be alive?
And if he were, do you understand that he must have killed the other
man?"
He had struck the right note. She pulled herself from him with natural
recoil. "Yes, yes; and that is clear from Hermie's action, too. But you
don't know what happened. There must be some excuse."
"You know, Miss Bertha, you have thought very foolish things before; you
may not be right now."
She sat down on the edge of the verandah, and began to weep heartily and
quietly. He was relieved: tears proved her well-being.
They had come, walking together, to that end of the house where, on the
second day of their acquaintance, he had found her at dawn watching over
his safety. He looked about now, and longed for the dawn, but there was
nothing but glimmering darkness and the sweet smell of the gathering
rain.
When Bertha had cried for a while she went in to her sister. In a minute
she came tip-toeing back to Durgan.
"Hermie is sleeping quite restfully," she said. "How much softer the air
feels; I think the change has done her good."
As he turned away Durgan's heart sank. The belief that Claxton was the
murderer, not the murdered, and had been sheltered all these years by
his own wife, forced itself upon Durgan. These innocent women might find
rest in the softened air; but what rest could that woman who bore his
name ever find, whose cruelty and selfishness must, in consequence of
the exposure now imminent, bear the light of public shame?
Chapter XXXII
WHAT A TERRIER FOUND
Durgan took the terrier and led him up and down through the bit of
sequestered woodland; but the animal, beyond enjoying the unusual
festivity of a night walk, exhibited no sense of the situation. It
stopped to bark at no tree-foot, and altho it resented the intrusion of
the driver, discovered nothing else to resent.
The slow-tongued driver made another remark. "That's a queer thing, too.
I'd have thought he'd have barked at a cat in a tree, I would."
Durgan had despised Alden in the vicious snap of his pitiless anger
against the fugitive; but as the night wore on, and he saw his face grow
more and more haggard, as if he were aged by a decade since the last sun
shone, he was glad to procure him rest or relief of any sort.
Confident that the dog would give warning if the prisoner climbed down,
Alden accepted the use of Durgan's bed; but it was easy to see that he
could not rest. There was the constant secret movement of one who was
pretending to be still.
"Perhaps you would rather talk," said Durgan. "I wish you would tell me
all you know about Miss Claxton's father. Is she like him?"
"Not at all. I found little to respect in his character."
"I suppose you dug up his past very thoroughly."
"There was nothing in it but selfishness and vanity. He was of old
colonial stock, but had been ill-reared to leisure and luxury--the worst
training in a new country, where these things involve no corresponding
responsibilities. He married into a plain New England family for the
sake of money. The mother of Hermione, I need not say, was immensely his
superior; but she died at the birth of the second daughter. There is
some disparity of age between them--Hermione----"
Durgan had to bring him back from reminiscences of his love.
"Ah--as to Claxton's ill health, if it interests you, I judge that it
dated from a blow to his vanity. He was very worldly, and, when a
widower, did a good deal of amateur acting, and became engaged to marry
a young beauty who had just come out as a public singer. Society took
her up. She was the belle of the season, and jilted Claxton. It was a
matter of talk; but I don't suppose his daughters ever heard of
it--daughters don't hear such things, you know. He kept them in a
country boarding-school, where, I am happy to say, Hermione got
religion."
Durgan smiled to himself over the quaint phrase used so seriously. "But
the father?"
"He married in pique a dull pink and white society woman, with more
money; and then became a chronic invalid. When he was tired of his wife
he sent for his daughters. I never heard that he was unkind to them, or
to his wife; but it seemed to me he only cared for them as they devoted
themselves to his comfort. Hermione--often has she discussed it with
me--was very anxious as to his spiritual state. It was her great desire
that he should seek salvation. It was that desire that caused her always
such distress when her father finally dabbled in spiritualism. His
death, in a still ungodly state, was, I can aver, her worst trouble in
all that terrible chain of events. She felt so much that she never
mentioned her concern about him again."
Alden had been speaking in a sleepy way, as if his recent distrust of
his chosen lady was obliterated by some fragrance from the poppy beds
of weariness and love and night.
He slept at last. The bleakness of the mountain night had given place to
a balmy rain.
Durgan pondered. He knew that his wife would bow down to one like
Claxton, who had had the social ball at his feet; she would regard his
intimate knowledge of the society she desired to cajole as a most
valuable property, and would risk much to retain it.
When the gray morning came they went out to the trees again, but no one
was hiding among them.
Then they went down by the road, and climbed along to the foot of the
precipice; but, making the closest search along its base, they found
nothing.
Alden became racked by a new fear: the unknown had perhaps cheated them,
and recrossed the road. The desperate condition of the man, the women
unprotected--these thoughts were so terrible that he ran up the hill to
protect them, unconscious that his valor was out of all proportion to
his frame.
When he was gone the driver said, "Forty dollars didn't get the better
of me crossin' that road while I kep' an eye on it, I reckon."
The mountain forest dripped and trickled, the dry ground soaking in the
moisture with almost audible expansion of each atom of earth, each pore
of fern and leaf, and the swelling of twigs. The wet and glisten
everywhere deepened the color of rock and wood, moss, lichen, and weed.
The driver stood considering the face of the rock; the terrier began
nosing among some fallen leaves; Durgan was looking this way and that,
to see which might have invited the nearest temporary hiding. Alden had
believed the stranger's weakness a pretence; Durgan believed the
strength he had shown to be the transient effect of fear.
The driver at length said, "Hi! Look here. What's that?"
He pointed to a black bundle in a fissure of the precipice.
"That there fur coat! I'll be blowed! He got down here, sir; and he had
the devil to help him--leastwise, reckoning from all I have seen this
night, I conclude that Satan was in the concern. He climbed down that
crack in the rock, sir, and caught on by the bushes on the way, and
scrambled along that slantwise bit, and then he got hold of the tree. He
warn't killed or maimed or he'd be here."
"Then we've lost him."
"Mr. Bantam Cock will perhaps be sending despatches for to apprehend him
at the different steam-car depôts, for to get my forty dollars."
"Say we make it fifty?"
"Well, sir; I would say, 'thank you.'"
"And that would be all you would say, mind you, or I'll have you turned
off at the hotel."
"Then I won't even say that, sir. There ain't anything comes easier to
me than shuttin' up, I reckon."
After this colloquy, which passed quickly, Durgan was turning upwards
when he heard a horse ascending the road. In a few minutes he had met
his two negro laborers coming to their work, and, behind them, the
doctor from Hilyard, riding, as he usually did, with saddle-bags, his
old buff clothes much bespattered.
"The yellow nigger is dead, Mr. Durgan. He died last night with the
change of the weather. You told me to keep him alive till you came, but
you didn't come. He was a very curious fellow--not half bad; and his
last freak was to ask me to come and tell you to look sharp after the
visitor he sent you. So, as you're not much out of my way to-day, I've
come at once."
He got off his horse, and the two men talked together.
The doctor, whose ordinary round comprised anything within a radius of
thirty miles, had not been in Hilyard when the rich traveler from New
Orleans arrived and started again. His wealth and imperious airs had
impressed the little town, but beyond the fact that he had gained a
private interview with the dying prisoner, nothing was known about him.
"And the odd thing is," said the doctor, "that 'Dolphus sent the jailer
with every cent he had in the world--about fifteen dollars--to bribe the
driver. As to his health, he was decidedly better, and when this Mr.
Courthope turned up he seems to have acted like a well man, and made him
believe he was well. When I got home there was a report about that the
stranger was a wonder-worker, and had cured him. But when I went to him
the fever was up. After his last flash in the pan he burnt out in a few
hours."
Durgan supposed there might be something of greater importance to
justify the doctor's ride. "Perhaps," he said, "he asked you to bring a
message to Mr. Alden or Miss Smith?"
"He was a most extraordinary fellow," said the other. "I never was quite
sure when he was talking sense and when nonsense. But the message was to
you; and it was that you were to keep this Courthope, and write to the
chief of police in New York and claim the reward offered in the Claxton
case. And you are to give as much of the money to Adam as you think
will pay for his wife. He said he'd die easy if I'd give you that tip;
and he did die easy."
Durgan smiled sadly at the pathos of the dying nigger's interest in his
fellows and his desire for justice to be done. "Did you reckon him
wandering?"
"That's just as you choose to take it," said the doctor. "I'm accustomed
to hearing secrets and forgetting them. My only business before I forget
this one is to ascertain that a dangerous character is not left at
large. If you cannot give me that assurance, I suppose I ought to tell
the police myself."
Durgan felt that the case of the Claxton sisters had now reached
extremity, and, much against his will, he replied in a nonchalant tone,
"We must come and talk the matter over with Mr. Alden." He saw no means
of securing the runaway or of hiding the scandal--he hardly desired to
hide it. He felt stunned at the shame that must fall on his wife.
As they turned the doctor said, "You think this yellow fellow and his
sort mere trash, Mr. Durgan; but I'm inclined to think he would have
made a good citizen with any sort of training. He had more public spirit
than ten of our corrupt politicians rolled into one."
"Perhaps so," said Durgan absently. "I may be prejudiced."
He whistled the dog, and heard nothing at first, but then, from a nook
below the hill, came an answering yelp. The yelp was repeated.
The driver, who had been standing passive at a distance, sauntered
nearer. "There's something queer about that dog. He's been down there a
powerful while. If he'd found another shoe he'd bark like that. And
mebbe there's another shoe still to find, sir, for if two fits out a
man, a man in conjunction with the devil might require two more."
Durgan took the hint, and went down towards the dog. He was puzzled by
its peculiar call. It came a little way to meet him, crawling and
fawning, but returned swiftly whither it came.
In a few minutes more Durgan was looking down on the prostrate body of
the unknown traveler. He was lying straight and flat on his back; his
eyes were open, and they met Durgan's with a mournful look of full
intelligence which, in that position, was more startling than the glazed
eye of death. The terrier licked the hand that lay nearest the face,
then licked the brow very gently just for a moment, and yelped again.
"Why don't you get up?"
The stranger's lips moved. Durgan had to kneel to hear the thick effort
at speech.
"Paralyzed!"
The lips moved feebly to let Durgan know that, after his escape, the
seizure had come as he fled. The doctor came, and gently moved hand and
foot, testing the muscles and nerves. He confirmed the self-diagnosis.
The stricken man had probably lain unconscious half through the night,
but his mind was clear now.
The rain had washed the temporary dye and all the stiffness from his
hair. It lay gray and disheveled about his thin, brown face. The haggard
lines were partly gone; the dark eyes looked up steadily, sad as eyes
could be, but fearless.
The change was so great that Durgan spoke his involuntary sympathy.
"Guess you feel nothing worse can come to you now." Then he added, "Keep
up your heart. I'll take you where you will be well cared for."
The driver had followed slowly, and looked on without query.
"You bet," he said at length; "the devil's gone out of him."
Durgan wondered if that was actually what had happened when Bertha felt
the peace of God, and Hermione slept, and the wretched mulatto found
ease in death.
"He had over-exerted," said the doctor, "and all the tonic went out of
the air when the rain fell."
Chapter XXXIII
THE RESTORATION
They went back to Durgan's hut, and made a stretcher of his bed, and
brought down his laborers as carriers.
A curious group walked slowly up the zig-zag road to the summit house:
Durgan and the terrier walked one on each side; the doctor rode behind.
There was naught to be said; they walked in silence. Sometimes the
eyelids of the still face drooped; again they were opened wide. The wet
forest breathed about their silence the whisper of the rain.
When the party came in sight of the house gable, someone who was sitting
in the window of the sisters' room seemed to see them and moved away.
The place was astir for the day. Smoke was rising from the chimneys, and
the soft-voiced colored servant was singing to a Southern melody one of
the doggerel hymns of her race:
"De Lord He sent His angel.
(Fly low, sweet angel;
Fly low, sweet angel;
Comin' for deliver us again.)
An' He tamed de lions for Daniel;
An' for Peter broke de prison and de chain.
O! de angel of de Lord."
The servant was at work in an outer kitchen; the very words were clear.
The gentle melody of the stanza was ended abruptly by the soft,
triumphal shout of the last line.
Durgan made the laborers rest their burden within the doorway of the
barn, while he went forward with the doctor. But now from the back door
Hermione came. She was clad in the simple gray morning gown which she
always wore at her housewife's duties; but she looked a shadow of
herself, so pale and wan with the pain of the night. She came forward
quickly. Durgan saw at a glance that she knew what Bertha could tell,
and was ready to meet whatever evil was sufficient for the day. Even at
such a moment, so selfless and courteous was she, she had a modest word
of greeting and gratitude for Durgan.
Durgan made the doctor tell her the truth quickly, and Hermione went
straight on to the side of the nerveless man.
Almost as soon as she looked, without a moment's betrayal of unusual
emotion, she stooped and kissed him.
In thick utterance the paralytic repeated her name. What he thought or
felt none might know; the still features gave no expression.
Then a great joy lit up her face, and the tone of her homely words was
like a song of praise.
"We can keep you safe. You will be quite safe here; and Birdie and I
will take real good care of you. We have a beautiful home ready for
you."
The doctor had turned away. She gave her command to the bearers, and
walked with new lightness beside the bed as it was carried toward the
house.
Durgan followed, and found that he was holding his hat in his hand.
How terrible, indeed, was this meeting of love and lack-love, of the
life gained by self-giving and the life lost by self-saving. The woman,
at one with all the powers of life--body, mind, and spirit a unity--able
(rare self-possession) to give herself when and for whom she would;
meeting with this self-wrecked, disintegrated man, for whom she had
suffered and was still eager to suffer. Like most things of divine
import, that kiss given by the very principle of life to the soul lying
in moral death had passed without observation. Durgan looked upon the
still face. He could now clearly recognize the likeness to Bertha in the
form, color, and inward glow of the eyes; but so fixed and
expressionless were the muscles of the face, which had taken on a look
of sensuous contentment, that the onlooker could not even guess what
that glow of suffering might betoken, how much there was of memory, of
shame, of remorse, of any love for aught but self, or how much latent
force of moral recuperation there might be.
While they went to the house through the tears of the morning, the
negress with the velvet voice was still singing:
"An' de Lord He sent His angel,
An' He walked wi' de children in de flame.
(Fly low, sweet angel.)"
Durgan, who had been feeling like one in a dream, suddenly forgot to
listen to the song, for he saw, as in a flash, the cause of Hermione's
solemn joy. The criminal had been restored to her in the only way in
which it was possible for his life to be preserved for a time, and for
him to be allowed to die in peace. Neither Alden, nor any other, could
propose to bring this stricken man to answer in an earthly court. It was
again her privilege to lavish love upon him, to reap the result of her
sacrifice by tending his lingering life and telling him her treasure of
faith--of the mercy of God and the hope of heaven.
Chapter XXXIV
ALL THAT HAPPENED
Durgan felt that day to be a distinctly happy one. A youth makes many
pictures of happiness for himself, and he must have but a poor outfit of
hope and imagery whose pictures are realized. Yet happiness springs up
beside the steps of the older wayfarer, a wild flower that he has not
sown or tended. In places where his familiar burden lightens, or when
gathering clouds disperse, it pushes up its bright flower-face with a
positive beauty and fragrance, something much fairer and better than the
mere negation of trouble, yet not so gay as mere imagined joys. Durgan,
who had come to this mountain thinking to be alone, and had become so
strenuously involved in the fate of his neighbors, to-day not only felt
peace in the cessation of fear and gloomy forebodings which had
enwrapped them all, but was lifted beyond this to participate in the joy
of heavenly deliverance which transfigured Hermione Claxton. He could
not think of her to-day without a strange, new, selfless pleasure which
he did not analyze; and, added to this, his heart leaped up in gratitude
on his own account, for surely now the wife he was bound to honor would
be spared the public odium which to her vain nature would be peculiar
agony. The fate of a long, living death for the man who had stifled
every honorable impulse to avoid the legal punishment of death was
robbed of its worst horror, because it gave him immunity from the
passion of fear by which he was enslaved, and restored him to the arms
of the only human love which could not be quenched by his misconduct and
disgrace. Durgan knew enough to suppose that when his wife's first
glamor of reverence for Claxton had passed, when, with the help of such
a skilful prompter, she had succeeded on the stage of her ambition, his
home with her had been no longer even peaceful. The letters 'Dolphus had
stolen had convinced Durgan that she was prepared to get rid of her
protégé if possible; and when he left her he was practically a homeless
fugitive, the whole world his enemy. From such a fate self-destruction,
or yielding to the last penalty of the law, were the only ways of
escape, had not the angel of mercy intervened.
Later in the day Alden came from the room above the carriage house, the
room in which Durgan had spent his first two curious nights on Deer
Mountain. He only knew of the finding of the fugitive, for, on being
assured of this, he had fallen asleep in sheer exhaustion.
The rain was shifting for the time, affording intervals of blithe air
and mellow sunlight. Alden sat him down upon a settle in the verandah.
The trailing vines and the passion-flower were glowing with the
life-renewing moisture, but the gorgeous leaves and long tassels of the
love-lies-bleeding had fallen, sodden with the rain.
Durgan was waiting for some instructions concerning certain invalid
requisites. His cousins, the Durgan Blounts, were returning to Baltimore
for the winter, and Durgan had undertaken that they should make the
purchases. No sooner had Alden spoken than Miss Claxton left her writing
desk, came swiftly, and sat down beside him.
"There is something that I am waiting to tell you," she said. Her voice
was very gentle. "I have not made any explanation, either, to Mr.
Durgan, for I wouldn't till I saw you; but he ought to know, for Mrs.
Durgan's sake."
Durgan had moved, but, at her command, remained.
There was a little silence, and after she began he was quite sure she
had forgotten his presence. She took Alden's passive hand in hers.
"Herbert! my father has come back to us. No, dear; do not start like
that. He is still alive. That is my long secret, which I could not have
kept from you for anyone's sake but his."
Alden said not a word. He sat erect, as if someone had struck him.
"Oh," she cried, with tears in her voice, "the fate that came to him
that terrible morning was worse than death, and now he has been carried
back to us paralyzed. Have patience with me, and I will tell you all
that happened."
The little lawyer, as if suddenly moved by some electric force, was for
bounding from his seat, every nerve quivering with the sting of his own
mortification and the shock of surprise. It was the strength of her will
that controlled him.
"I must tell you from the beginning--it is the only way. Upon the
morning that that crime was committed in our house, a boy came with a
note from Mr. Beardsley. It made my father very angry. He told me that
Beardsley was coming on the heels of his messenger upon an impertinent
errand. What he said was that Beardsley was bent upon dictating the
terms of his friendship with Mrs. Durgan, whom he had only lately met.
"There was something the maids had to do that afternoon, and I sent
them then in the morning, for I could not bear that anyone should see
such a person in our house, or see my father so angry. My poor
step-mother had not risen from bed. When Beardsley came he went upstairs
to my father's sitting-room. The door was shut, but from what my father
told me afterwards, I know pretty well what happened."
"Afterwards!" repeated Alden; "afterwards! Hermione?"
"Dear Herbert, do not be angry, but only listen, and you will understand
how easily what seemed impossible could happen. This Mr. Beardsley had
the idea that my poor father and Mrs. Durgan had fallen in love at his
meetings. He was a simple, stupid man, and he thought it his duty to
exhort my father and warn my step-mother. I think that, angry as he was,
my father thought it best to receive his exhortation with the affection
of playfulness. It was his way, you know. He had graceful, whimsical
ways; he was not like other people. When he could not make this man see
his own folly, or divert him from his purpose, he took down the little
old pistol that was fastened on the wall as an ornament--the one that
was found. I need not tell you that he did not know it was loaded; I
did not know, and I dusted his things every day, for he could not bear
to have a servant in the room. He tried to stop Beardsley by threatening
to shoot himself in mock despair. Poor mamma, hearing loud voices, ran
in.
"Up till then I am sure papa had not a serious thought, except that he
was naturally angered by the folly of the man; but the pistol went off,
and poor mamma was killed. Oh! can you not imagine my father's wild
grief and anger against the fellow that, as he would think, had caused
him to do it? But there was more than that. My father told me that
Beardsley denounced him as a wilful murderer, and declared that it was
only a feigned accident. Then, you see, he was the only witness, and
could ruin my father's reputation. Oh, I think it was fear as much as
anger, but I am sure it was frenzy, possessed my father. You know what
happened. The Indian battle-ax was hanging beside the pistol, and as
soon as Beardsley fell, I am sure my father lost all control of himself
or any knowledge of what he was doing."
"Hermione," said Alden, "you cannot believe this story? Who has made you
believe it?" He lifted her hand to his lips. "Have you believed this all
these years?"
"It is true, Herbert; you will have to believe it. I will tell you my
part of it. I do not think I did right, but you will see that I did not
know what else to do. When I heard the noise I ran upstairs, but the
door was locked. The boy that brought the note was waiting in the
kitchen all this time for Beardsley to pay him. Then, in a minute, all
was quiet, and I heard my father sobbing like a child. You cannot think
how quickly it all happened. Then my father came to the door and
whispered through, 'Hermione, are you alone? Are the servants out? Is
Bertha there?' So I told him of Beardsley's messenger waiting below.
"Then he came out and called over the stairs to the boy. You know how
very clever and quick he always was when he wanted to do anything. He
looked the boy up and down, and then he said, 'Do you want to earn a
hundred dollars?' The boy was cautious; he did not answer. My father
said, 'Can you hold your tongue and help me, and I'll make a gentleman
of you? It's your best chance, for a crime has been committed in this
house, and if you don't do as I bid you, I'll give you up to the police
and say you did it; they'll take my word for it.' And all the time,
between speaking, he was sobbing. He shoved the boy into his
dressing-room. Then he told me what had happened.
"He told me he would be hanged if I did not keep quite quiet. I could
not believe that they were dead. I went into the room, but I couldn't
stop an instant. The sight of that poor body, disfigured past all
recognition, even the clothes stained beyond recognition, made me almost
insensible. I saw that no doctor could be of any use.
"My father was very quick. He shaved himself, and colored his face with
his paints, and put on the boy's clothes. He told me he would go to Mrs.
Durgan, who would get him away. He told me to call the police at once,
and tell them everything, except that I had seen him or knew anything
about him. He locked the boy in a narrow cupboard that held hot-water
pipes, and told me how to let him out at night. I did not think at the
time it could be wrong to keep silence about my father. I did just what
he told me to do.
"You know, Herbert, you said the other night that I had deceived you;
but, indeed, the great deceit came of itself. I don't think even my
father intended it. I could never have believed they could have mistaken
that man lying there for my father. First, the police made the mistake;
then, in a few hours, we heard the newsboys crying it all over the
streets. Still I felt sure that when you came, and the coroner, the
truth would be known. When you believed it, too, what word could I have
said to you that would not have made it your duty to hunt him down? His
daughter was the only person who could take the responsibility of
silence. I don't say I was right to do it; I only know I could not do
anything else. Even the boy, as I found afterwards, had never seen
Beardsley. A servant had given him the note to bring. He naturally
thought it was Beardsley who had bribed him, and escaped in his clothes.
I only kept silent hour by hour.
"I thought again they would find out at the inquest; but when, at
length, the poor body was buried, and those saturated, torn clothes
burned, and I had found out from Mrs. Durgan that the poor wretch had no
near relatives or friends to mourn him, I could do nothing but
acquiesce. I had a message from father, through Mrs. Durgan, before they
arrested me. She and he had decided that he must personate the dead man,
and he even ventured to play the medium's part at the dark séance. He
was always clever at disguises. I could not judge them. I hardly cared,
then, whether I lived or died; the wickedness of it all was so dreadful.
I shrank far more--and there was nothing heroic in that--from the
thought of my father being arrested and punished than from danger for
myself. Think what it would have been like if it had been your father!"
Seeing that Alden was profoundly distressed, she hastened to say, "If I
had told you, Herbert, how painful would your position have been! And I
never even told Bertha; it was father's parting request that she should
not know. But I know that of late she has guessed something, for she has
lived in fear up here alone. I was obliged when I was ill in Paris to
tell her where she would find the truth; she guessed the rest, I fear,
and it must have been father's return that she has dreaded. But now he
has been brought back so helpless he can never hurt anyone again."
Alden's emotion was hardly restrained from breaking through the crust of
his conventionality, and Hermione was fain to turn to a lighter aspect
of the case in addressing Durgan.
"I gathered from my father's letters that Mrs. Durgan's motive in
befriending him was partly kindness, and partly that he could be of use
to her."
"I can understand that," said Durgan. He also felt it a relief to speak
clearly on the only aspect of this sorrowful tale which did not awaken
emotion. "It was the one thing in the whole world that my wife
wanted--to be told how to manipulate the secret springs of a world of
fashion in which she had so far moved as one in the dark. And having
once taken your father in, she could not go back."
He rose as he said this and went away, wondering how much Alden would
submit to the continued devotion of such a daughter to such a father,
how much Hermione's appeal would reach him: "Think how you would feel if
it were your father."
Chapter XXXV
READJUSTMENTS
A day or two later Alden was returning to New York. Durgan drove him to
Hilyard in Miss Claxton's surrey.
All the mountains had begun to wear golden caps. Lower down the yellow
pod of the wild pea and purple clusters of wild grapes were tangled in
the roadside bushes. The sun shone, and the birds cawed and chirped as
they quarreled for the scarlet berries of the ash; not a bird sang, for
it was not nesting time.
"The doctor can't make a guess, then, as to how long Claxton may live?
It may be for months, I suppose," said Durgan.
Alden drew himself up in the attitude of one who gives an important
opinion. He was going back to his world of conventions, and already
taking on its ways. "My dear sir, I see no reason why, with such
nursing, surrounded by such luxuries, in the finest air, and in such
tranquillity, he should not live--ah, perhaps for years."
"It will not be so long as that, I think."
"That must be as God wills."
But there was too much religious starch in the tone of these words to
suggest acquiescence.
This good little man, with all his constancy and fervor, had not a large
enough soul to see so vile a prodigal feasted without resentment.
Said Durgan, "If his mind is as lucid as the doctor thinks, his present
experience must be pretty much like lying helpless in a lake of fire."
"Sir, what is there to trouble him? Two of the finest, most agreeable
women who ever lived on this earth are his slaves. They wheel him hither
and thither as he suggests a preference. They read; they sing; they show
him nature in her glory; and his body suffers no pain. I do not
understand your allusion."
"I thought it just possible that, being human, he might have a soul
latent in him."
"'Soul'! He has, without excuse or provocation, committed the most
brutal crime of the decade; he has passed his years since ministering to
his own tastes and indolences in the society of a lady who pleased his
fancy, while, with the most horrid cruelty and worm-like cowardice, he
has left his tender daughter to suffer the consequences of his crime.
He has within him, sir, a soul, humanly speaking, beyond hope of
redemption."
"But Christian faith compels his daughter to set aside the human aspects
of the case."
"Women, sir--women have no standard of manly virtue. Can you conceive
that a son--a man who knew the world, could slur over such vice, such
perfidy, in a parent?"
Alden's reiteration of "Sir," spoken between his teeth, had so very much
the force of "Damn you," that Durgan forbore to suggest that the point
of his remark had been evaded.
Alden, half conscious of his own angry inconsistency as a religious man
in desiring the torment of the wicked, still resented Durgan's logic
enough to bring forward at this point an unpalatable subject. "With
regard to Mrs. Durgan, sir; from all the inquiries I have made, I
understand that she probably was aware that Adolphus, who has been his
valet all these years, had summoned Claxton here on threat of
disclosure, and that Claxton had gone to New Orleans, there to assume
his new incognito--which, knowing the negro's origin, was natural enough
before he interfered on his behalf in your neighborhood. But I
understand that Mrs. Durgan did not know that I or the ladies were
here, and had no suspicion of the servant's intended treachery. In all
probability she has not heard from Claxton, at any rate since he left
New Orleans. You are aware that we have decided that the Miss Claxtons
shall, till their father's death, retain the name they took upon
entering this neighborhood. I wish to suggest to you that it would not
be safe to trust Mrs. Durgan with the secret of their whereabouts. It is
undesirable, in keeping a secret, to trust human nature any further than
is absolutely necessary, and it appears to me, therefore, needful to
request you to let Mrs. Durgan be left in entire ignorance of the fate
of her late protégé."
Durgan could not but inwardly admit that there was a certain poetic
justice in leaving his wife thus in a condition of suspense, and altho
he resented the manner of the instruction, he expressed conditional
acquiescence.
Durgan more than suspected that Alden was querulously wreaking upon the
criminal, and upon all he met, the anger he felt against himself for
not, at the first, discerning the simple mistake which had caused the
mystery of the "Claxton case." As they drove on, mile after mile,
through the wild harvests of the woodland, this supposition was
confirmed. After talking of many things, Alden broke out in
self-soothing comment:
"As to the mistake of the murdered man's identity, my dear sir, how
could doubt enter the mind? The body lay in Claxton's private room,
beside the couch that he constantly occupied--an unrecognizable mass;
Mrs. Claxton dead beside him, and neither of self-inflicted wounds;
Bertha wailing the loss of her father; Hermione stunned by shock of
grief. Who the dead was, seemed so self-evident; who the murderer could
be, such a puzzle, that the mind inevitably dwelt exclusively on the
latter point. My dear sir, looking back on the matter, even now I cannot
see how a suspicion of the truth could have arisen."
With his professional pique adding to his intense private grief for
Hermione's long sacrifice, it was, perhaps, not surprising that the
return of perfect confidence in her, after the agony of reluctant
distrust, did not do more to sweeten the ferment of his little soul.
Durgan reflected that on a mind no longer young, filled with long
earlier memories of mutual trust, the suspicion of a few recent days
could make little impression. And, again, this short-lived emotion of
suspicion was succeeded by the pain of knowing that his own happiness
and hers had been voluntarily sacrificed for a wretch so devoid of any
trace of chivalry or of parental feeling.
Before reaching Hilyard, Alden expressed his opinion upon another aspect
of the recent disclosure. "You say, sir, that to you the most amazing
part is that such a man as Claxton could do so deadly a deed. My dear
sir, my experience of crime is that the purely selfish nature only needs
the spark of temptation to flame out into some hellish deed. No doubt
you will think me puritanical, but I hold that, while to most cultured
egoists such temptation never comes, in God's sight they are none the
less evil for that mere absence of temptation. Idleness and self-love,
especially where education enhances the guilt, are the dirt in which the
most virulent plague-germs can propagate with speed and fecundity."
Durgan felt that, whether his opinion was true or false, it was brought
forward now with an energy directed against the class to which he
himself belonged.
The two men parted stiffly, but they both felt that Alden would return
in a more placable mood.
That day, in a burying-ground near Hilyard, the mulatto called
"'Dolphus" was laid beneath the ground. Born the ward of a nation whose
institutions had first brought about his existence and then severed him
from his natural protectors, he had been given only a little knowledge
by way of life's equipment, which, murderer as he was, had proved in his
hands a less dangerous thing than in those of many a citizen of the
dominant race. No one in that great nation mourned his death or gave a
passing sigh to his lone burial; and if anyone set store by that bare
patch of grave cut in the unkempt grass among the wild field lilies it
must have been God, who is said to gather what mortals cast away.
Durgan took Adam back to Deer with him. Adam was somewhat the worse for
the success of his grief and piety, genuine tho they were. These
qualities had won him praise and consideration; they were no longer
unconscious. Like a child who had been on a stage, he was inclined to
pose and show elaborate signs of grief.
Durgan bore with him for a few days, and then spoke his mind:
"Stop that, you absurd nigger! If you don't look alive I'll make you!"
Adam paused in the middle of a pious ejaculation with his mouth open.
"Reckon you don't know what I'll do to you."
"No, Marse Neil. How can this pore child know your mind, suh?"
"I'll have you married to the new girl Miss Smith got. I'll do it next
week!"
Adam rolled his eyes heavenward. "An' the Lord only just took my pore
gal, suh! You's not in earnest, suh?"
"And if I make you marry the new girl the Lord will have given you a
better one."
Adam was deftly cooking Durgan's breakfast, moving about the hut with
the light step of pride in the new service.
There was a silence. Durgan had become absorbed in the newspaper.
At last, with another sigh that was cut short ere it had expanded his
huge chest, Adam meekly began:
"Marse Neil, suh."
"Well?"
"The minister who visited me in my affliction, he say--sez he--that we
ought to take wi' joy all the dealin' of the Lord an' bless His name."
And Durgan replied, without raising his eyes, "I believe it. Adam, you
are a good nigger. I'll speak to Miss Smith."
One day, a while after, the young gardener against whose aspirations
Durgan had warned Bertha came up to the mica mine. He had left Deer Cove
soon after Bertha had dismissed him, and gone, as the old stories have
it, "into the world to seek his fortune." It was a very unusual step for
a mountain white, and had given his father so much concern that he had
had the son prayed for at the Sunday camp meeting. The errant gardener
had roamed as far as Baltimore, and worked awhile in the household of a
certain rich man. He had come away from the plutocrat's palace homesick
for his mountains, but had brought back one dominant idea. Probably his
disappointed love had made his mind peculiarly impressionable, or, true
to the traditions of his class, he might, perhaps, not have gained even
one. He had now the most exaggerated idea of the elevation to which the
"rich and great" were raised. Convinced when he left Deer that Bertha
would not receive his addresses, he had found consolation in investing
her with a new glamor, as one of an almost princely cast. Upon his
return he had heard the talk of the neighborhood--the story which Alden
had allowed to go abroad--that the invalid father, who had been leading
some kind of dissipated life abroad, had returned, after years of
estrangement, to be nursed in his last illness by his daughters. Herein
lay the motive of young Godson's errand.
"They say that he doesn't like colored men lifting him and moving him
about--that Miss Smith's looking for a helper for him."
Durgan laid his pick against the rock and stood in silent astonishment.
He had seen different emotions work different changes in the habits of
men, but never so remarkable a result of love as this cure of petty
pride in the stiff-necked mountaineer. He was uncertain how far the
young man had interpreted himself aright.
"It is for Miss Bertha's sake you wish to do this?" he asked.
Godson assented.
And having at last satisfied himself, by more interrogation, that the
youth had actually no further hope at present than to serve his goddess
in some lowly task, Durgan undertook to support his application.
With this end in view he went up to the summit house at his usual hour,
when the day's work was over, at sundown.
On the lawn the invalid's flat carriage was tilted at an angle which
enabled him to see the delectable mountains bathed in the light
reflected from that other country--the cloud-land beyond the golden
river of the horizon, in which the sun, like a pilgrim, was going down.
The elder daughter was reading to him.
Durgan had no mind to disturb them. He had come hoping that the
paralytic would have been put away for the night. He disliked
encountering Claxton; and, had he disliked the man less, the wrestling
soul that shone through the eyes of the almost inanimate face would have
distressed him.
Bertha, who was sitting at a short distance from the pair, and out of
their sight, saw the visitor and came across the grass.
They went for a stroll together up on the higher rocks.
"I am very idle in these days," said Bertha. "All the children in my
nursery have grown up and are too big to be nursed. There is nothing to
do, even in the garden."
"But the care of your father must absorb all your time and thought."
As he said this there was a questioning inflection in his mind that he
kept out of his tone.
She hung her head as she walked. After a while she spoke, a beautiful
flush on her face. "In the old days father loved me better than Hermie,
because I was better-looking, and I always thought all that he did was
perfect. I thought I loved him far more than Hermie did, because she
often tried to persuade him that what he did was wrong. Now----"
Durgan waited.
"Now he does not want to see me. He does not like me to talk or read to
him. It makes it hard for Hermie, for she has everything to do. She
thinks father is shy of me and that it will wear away."
"I have no doubt it will."
"No," she sighed; "you are both wrong. Father, in spite of his
helplessness, sees far more clearly. He was always quick to read
everyone. He knows"--her voice faltered--"that I cannot love him now
that I know what he did. Oh, I hate him for deserting Hermie and letting
her bear it!" She pressed her hand to her side, as if speaking of some
disease that gave her pain. "How can I help it, Mr. Durgan? I despise
him, and he knows it."
"I dare say he does. He knows, of course, that the whole world could
regard him with no feelings but those of hatred and scorn."
She stopped short in her walk. In a minute she said, "I think I will go
back again, Mr. Durgan. I cannot bear that you should speak that way to
me about my own father."
He smiled. "You seem to have some filial affection left."
"Did you only say it to make me feel angry?"
"Yes; that is why I said it; but, at the same time, you must remember
that the world would certainly judge as you have said; and if the ties
of kindred did not give a closer embrace than the world does, there
would be no home feeling for any of us; there would be no bright spark
of the sacred fire of the next world in this."
"'Fire.' We think of heaven as light, not heat."
"And we think of hell as heat, not light; yet we know light and heat to
be one and the same thing; and both are the supreme need of life, and
both are the only adequate symbols of love."
Many a red flag and gay pennon of autumn was now flying on the heights
of Deer. The leaves of the stunted oak wood were floating and falling,
and below, the chestnuts were yellowing, burr and leaf. The weeds were
sere and full of ripe seed, and the shrubs of ripe berries. Birds of
passage in flocks were talking and calling, eating their evening meal,
or settling, a noisy multitude, in verdant lodging for the night.
"I always wonder where they come from, or where they are going," said
the girl. "I used to long so often, in all the nights and days I have
been on this mountain, to be able to fly away as the birds fly; and now,
since Eve died, what we have suffered makes me feel that just to live
here, away from the worse sorrows of the world, would be enough
happiness always."
"That's right. Let us make the best of our mountain, for we are likely
to enjoy its solitudes for some time to come."
"If I only could set my affections right!" she said wistfully. "Perhaps,
as you think, I have better feelings underneath, but they are not on the
top just now. I am ashamed to be with Hermie, because I suspected her;
and father is ashamed to be with me, because I am not good enough to
forget what he has done. And I have no comfort in religion, for either I
think God is cruel, or else most likely it is all chance and there is no
reason at the heart of the universe."
"You are quite ready to believe now in God's insanity."
"How can you taunt me that way? I have told you that I am ashamed of my
wicked thoughts about Hermione. But how can we tell that there is any
mind governing the universe?"
"It was only when you could not understand your sister that you thought
you had found any proof of lack of mind. You would treat the great Power
that lies behind the universe in the same way."
"I have heard many good people say as much. Do you think it wicked?"
"I can only say that I have never liked you so well since I knew your
thoughts about your sister. How much more must all good spirits despise
us when we distrust the mind of God."
"You speak unkindly. I cannot alter my doubt."
"No. You are endowed with beauty and health, intellect and heart. You
have done many things well. But this, I suppose, is a radical defect."
She did not look satisfied. "How can I alter it?"
"If I were you I would go on laying out the orchard you were working at
in spring. You could put in a great many of the small trees yourself. I
have gained so much from delving that I offer you the same occupation
with a certificate of merit."
"But I can't get the rows straight alone," she said, "or prepare the
ground. It is all as it was when the Godsons left. It was you who made
me send them away."
"And now I have come to ask you to take young Godson back," he said. So
he told the young man's story. "He will have time to help in the orchard
if he is employed about your father."
"Do you think there is no risk?" she asked, with the grave dignity that
the peculiar isolation of her life had given.
"I would not undertake to say that," he replied, with a smile. "But,
such as it is, he takes it. You need help sadly, and perhaps you will
both learn more wisdom than I was able to impart when I first
interfered."
Durgan went his solitary way down the trail. Godson was still waiting
for him. He was as fine a fellow as those remote mountains
produce--spare, tall, with a curious look of ideality peculiar to their
hardy sons. When he was told he might go up to the summit house, his
blue eyes, far under the projecting tow-colored brows, looked almost
like the eyes of a saint wrapped in adoration. Durgan was not in a mood
to feel that Bertha was his superior.
Durgan built sticks for a fire on the rock-ledge to make his own coffee.
He was a better man physically than he had been when he came to Deer
Mountain--strong, sinewy, and calm, the processes of age arrested by the
vital tide of work. Alone as he was in his eyrie, he could take keen
pleasure in the stateliness of his rock palace, in the vision of nights
and days that passed before it, in the food and rest that his body
earned. To-night he was not expecting satisfaction, and when he struck
his match the whole universe was gray and seemed empty; but no sooner
had his small beacon blazed than an answering beam leaped out of the
furthest distance. It was the evening star.