THE PICNIC AND THE OLD PRISON WELL.
Derrice and Captain White jogged merrily on. "Do you know what makes
Justin so sluggish?" asked the latter, after a time.
"Yes, he sat up last night with that poor sick man."
"Sick!--crazy drunk," reflected her companion. "Justin don't tell her
everything, and thank Heaven she ain't curious. She don't guess Bob
Wallis put in the night trying to brain her husband with the lamp, and
run him through with the poker, and play any other pesky tricks on him
that came in his mind. Justin had to keep his eyes open to keep alive.
Soho, this is a bad world," and he gazed keenly into the depths of the
underwood, where he thought he saw a pair of liquid brown eyes.
It was Orono, Miss Gastonguay's pet moose, whose age was seven months,
and whose weight was four hundred pounds. He would, however, not come
at Derrice's coaxing, and they plunged deeper and deeper into the
thicket after him.
"Go on, don't turn your back on a few trials," Captain White encouraged
Derrice, and finally they emerged scratched and breathless upon the
high river bank, where Derrice ruefully surveyed her torn gown.
Captain White laughed at her, drew from his pocket the key Miss
Gastonguay had given him, and unlocked the padlocked gate in the high
fence bounding the wood.
They were now on town property, and almost opposite them was the
prison. The river here took a sudden bend, and the old red building
crowned, or rather disfigured, a slight eminence on a spur of land
running out in the water.
Its ugly old face did indeed, as Captain White said, scowl at the
surrounding landscape, and its most malevolent glances were bestowed
on the magnificent property of French Cross that followed so smoothly
the curve and graceful lines of the wandering Rossignol. The sullen,
low-browed structure was fortunately going to ruin. Many years had
elapsed since the prisoners had been removed from it to a smart new
building of gray Albert freestone, erected in the centre of the town.
The windows were broken in, there were great holes in the overhanging
roof that was placed like an extinguisher atop of the red walls, yet
the prison was in its decay a more favourite haunt of the towns people
than it had been in its prime.
Owing to its situation, the view from its ruinous tower was
far-reaching and unique. It was the vantage-ground from which to survey
the towers and steeples of Rossignol, the opening of the verdant Bay,
French Cross and the wooded country beyond, and more extensive still,
the low green fields across the river, swelling up to the fertile farms
and beautiful rolling country stretching far away to the horizon.
Derrice and Captain White entered the prison yard, once high-walled and
guarded by a ponderous gate, but now broken down as to its walls, and
unprotected as to its gate, that lay ignominiously on its side, spurned
by the foot of every passer-by.
They went lightly over the gate and across the wide yard, then,
entering the tumble-down door, looked into a small room on the right,
formerly the office for receiving and discharging prisoners.
"No prison smell now," said Captain White, sniffing the air. "The wind
of heaven blows through empty sashes. See that three-legged table
hipping into the corner. You've had to come down in the world, old
fellow. Many a time I've seen unlucky fellows propping themselves
against you. Now you'd be glad of a leg yourself."
"Dear Captain White," cried Derrice, "don't, don't speak of those days.
I love to think of this place as deserted, the prisoners dead or happy.
Don't tell me stories about them."
"All right," he returned, gallantly. "We'll say angels dwelt here.
Poor, misguided angels with a dash of saints among 'em-- Just wait
a bit before you go up aloft. I've not been here for some time. I
want to have a look at the old feeding-place,--beg pardon, their
dining-saloon,"--and advancing along the corridor he struck his fist
against a door, massive in appearance, but in reality rusting on its
hinges, and yielding readily to his assault.
"This is where they used to be sprawling, or rather reclining, when
you came in," he said, indicating a small space dominated by open
galleries. "Black, white, and gray, in their dirty prison dress, or
rather their beautiful white gowns, with their pretty wings folded so
tight you couldn't see 'em. They manage these houses of detention for
martyrs differently now, thank Heaven. Come on here, little girl."
He walked for some distance below the hanging galleries, resounding so
often, in days gone by, to the heavy tramp of prisoners marching to
their cells.
"It was in here they feasted," he said, indicating a long dismantled
room. "Can't I see 'em now, poor devils, each with his bowl of porridge
and spoon? No knives because they got into a nasty little habit of
laying open each other's blessed visages. Look at the rats banqueting
here, whoop!" and he jumped and frightened a squeak from an old
graybeard darting by him, and caused Derrice to fall back and shriek
nervously.
"Silly child," he said, penitently, "you shouldn't be so nervous.
Let's get out of the ugly hole," and he made rapidly toward the stone
staircase at the other end of the building.
Derrice ran after him, then drank in the view from the tower, until he
challenged her to a return race to the old well in the prison yard.
The handicap in their race was twenty seconds, yet he made a wild rush
by Derrice on the staircase, and when she arrived at the goal he was
leaning coolly on the broken well rim.
She sank breathlessly on a heap of stones, and after laughing at her he
wheeled and stared into the well that had long since gone dry.
"I'd like to know what's down there," he said. "It used to be a famous
chuck-hole with the blessed martyrs. Every little while the prison
authorities had to clean it out to the tune of several bucket loads of
souvenirs."
"But what about polluting their supply of drinking water?" asked
Derrice, rising, and also leaning over it.
"Jack-knives and letters and photographs and jewelry wouldn't poison
them--Hello, what are you trying to do?"
"Oh, my watch, my watch!" uttered Derrice, with a cry of despair. "The
watch my father gave me."
"What did you throw it down there for?"
"I didn't throw it. It slipped from my belt. What shall I do?" and she
buried her face in her hands.
Disturbed by a kicking of the stones, she presently raised her head,
and saw Captain White taking off his coat. "You must not try to get
it," she exclaimed. "You might slip. Wait until you get a rope."'
"That's what I'm going for," he replied. "There's a carpenter's cottage
over there on the road. You stay here, and I'll soon be back."
He bounded away like a deer, and in a short time returned with a man
almost as active and lithe as he was himself.
"I guess I'm the most of a cat," he said, measuring his companion by a
glance. "You hold the rope and I'll go down."
"Oh, do be careful," entreated Derrice. "Those stones may be loose. I
had rather lose my watch than have one of them roll on you."
"We're agreed then. I've no ambition to turn into a pot of jelly," and
he cautiously poised himself on the shaky well mouth.
The whole structure was loose and crumbling, and every stone or brick
touched took a malicious pleasure in falling upon him. In his haste
he scratched his hands considerably in his descent, and upon arriving
below had to move about with extreme caution.
"Whew!" he exclaimed, as a brick put out the candle he had just
lighted, and then fell on his toes. "I must be brief."
A swing of his light, a rapid flash of his eyes, and he gave the signal
to be lifted above.
"Here," he said, extending the watch to Derrice as he crawled up to
brightness. "It's pretty well battered, but you can have it mended.
Don't wear it in such a mighty careless place again."
She thanked him fervently, lent him her handkerchief to tie around one
of his bleeding hands, and then accompanied him back to the wood.
As soon as they entered the gates they saw Miss Gastonguay coming to
meet them. Her surprised glance went from one to the other. Derrice was
torn and dishevelled, and her hair was tumbling about her shoulders;
while Captain White was decidedly battered in appearance, and added a
slight limp to his usual gait.
"Have you been in a fight?" she asked.
"No, no," laughed Derrice, "first in a spruce, then in a bramble
thicket, and afterward Captain White went down a well. See how his
hands are bleeding,--and oh, let me tell you about my watch."
Miss Gastonguay listened in silence to the tale of the misadventure;
then she handed the bruised ornament back to Derrice and remarked, "You
say your father gave it to you?"
"Yes, my dear, dear father."
"Let me have it when you have finished exhibiting it, and I will send
it to my jeweller in Bangor."
"Thank you, thank you," said Derrice, squeezing her hand. "And now may
I run on to tell Justin?"
"Certainly," said Miss Gastonguay, shortly. "You will find him in the
gazeebo."
Derrice tapped the pony on the neck by way of challenging him to
keep up with her, and went with flying feet toward Miss Gastonguay's
gazeebo, which was a summer-house situated in a clearing by the river.
The pony went with her, for he knew that supper-time was approaching,
and Miss Gastonguay, left alone with her guest, walked silently on
beside him.
After the lapse of a few seconds he drew a small object from his
pocket, with a calm, "I found something beside Derrice's watch down the
well."
"Did you?" she said, politely.
"Yes,--something with the Gastonguay crest on it. The watch was lying
snuggled up to it just as if it had gone down there to find it. There
was only this one clear place on the top of a flat rock. The rest was
choked with rubbish. I guess the ring had been down for some time,"
and he handed the small article to her.
Miss Gastonguay glanced sharply at him. His expression was composed,
and by no means curious. He gave the ring to her as if she had a right
to it, but he seemed to have no desire to question the strangeness of
its discovery.
"Did you tell Derrice?" she asked.
"No."
"How do you suppose it got there?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess some thief stole it and on his way
to be searched chucked it in there."
"It is a man's seal ring," she said, turning the discoloured ornament
round and round in her fingers.
"Yes, ma'am, I see that."
She stared at him from head to foot. He was walking lightly and swiftly
beside her in spite of his limp. She struggled with some emotion. "I
have seen you all my life,--have always known you well; yet lately you
seem to dawn on me with a strange familiarity. Tell me, is there any
reason for my suspicion--"
He stopped short in his halting walk and blushed with the faint,
evanescent blush of composed middle age. Then he said, shortly, "There
is, ma'am, you've caught something you might have caught before if
you'd had any dealings with me. I guess Derrice has started you in it
by bringing us together."
"Then some of the blood of this unhappy family does run in your veins."
"A little," he said, modestly. "It ain't a pretty subject to talk
over with a lady, but you understand the Gastonguays. You know that
ever since the priests hauled old Louis's sons and the young De Saint
Castins over the coals for lying in bed in the mornings and keeping
the Indians waiting about the truck-house and then selling 'em rum
in buckets, that they've had a wild streak in 'em. I feel it in me.
Sometimes there is a striped devil takes me by the hand and drags me
through a dance that I'm but a half-hearted partner in."
Miss Gastonguay groaned, but continued her walk with determination.
"What is the precise relationship?"
"It begins with your grandfather, who, more's the pity, ought to have
lived in Mormon days and been a high-class elder. The priests would
only allow him one wife and he wanted several. He couldn't get banns
for my grandmother and she couldn't get banns for him, for she also
had a partner. Anyhow, they had a kind of liking for each other,
and my mother ought to have had the same outspoken relation to your
grandfather that you have, but she hadn't, and it's just as well."
"Man, you confuse me with your relationships. Your mother was the
illegitimate daughter of my grandfather?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Does any one else know of this?"
"No, ma'am, no one. My mother told me on her death-bed. I needn't say
the secret was kept from my grandfather and father. The women seemed
to take a sort of devilish pride in even a left-handed connection with
such a distinguished family."
"Have you no pride in it?"
"Yes, ma'am,--lots in this way. I'm getting on in years, and being
lonely I kind of hanker after extending my trailers to other families,
just like some old weed that's soon going to be rooted up."
"You shall not regret telling me," she said, brokenly, "though it is
one more load for me to carry. Man, I am very unhappy."
"I know it," he said, under his breath.
She took a swift resolution. There was something in this man,--she
did not know what it was,--possibly it was the tie of blood, possibly
because in him she felt the French life and vivacity, and tenacity
of purpose under seeming frivolity that was so strongly akin to her
family, and so unlike the cold, frigid resolution of Justin, the
descendant of the Puritans. At any rate, she liked him, liked him far
better than the more polished Justin, and without resolving to entrust
her secret to him, she yet started to play the dangerous game of
recalling her lost brother to his memory.
"It is your cousin's," she said, suddenly, holding up the ring. "It
belonged to my unhappy brother Louis. Do you remember him?"
"Am I likely to forget my relations?" he said, keenly. "There is not a
man Jack nor a woman Jill of all the Gastonguays that I've not watched.
Yes, I call up your brother Louis, the gamiest of the lot. He used to
stone me, because his friends said I favoured him. Once I fetched him
a sly snowball behind the ear, but I didn't put a stone in it because
he was of my blood-- Hold on a minute, for mercy sakes, ma'am. Hold
on--hold on!"
Miss Gastonguay drew back. Was there a snake in her path that this
excitable man behaved so strangely? They were close to one of the
rustic seats placed at intervals along the walks of the wood, and on
one of the seats he suddenly sank, guarding his eyes with one bandaged
hand and stretching out the other as if to keep her away.
"Oh, crimini fish skins!" he ejaculated. "I see it now. What a fool
I have been! That little chirrup of a girl harping on my look of
her father--old Sylvester's visits to the prison--I see it now, I
see it now. I thank you, ma'am," and, springing up, he seized Miss
Gastonguay's hand and shook it warmly.
"Get out with you!" she said. "Do you want to call attention to us?"
and yet she was not annoyed, but rather gratified, and watched with
pleasure the rapidity with which his mind ran back along the thread of
recollection she had given him.
"Louis running away--Louis missing--Louis said to be dead, not dead
but living, and cutting up as usual. Under Sylvester's wide-spread
wing--Justin's darling--Justin's father-in-law. All very natural. Thank
you, ma'am, thank you. I'm glad Derrice dropped that watch. Tell me
some more,--tell me some more."
She sat down beside him on the bench, and relieved her overburdened
heart by talking freely. They seemed an incongruous couple, the
grizzled lady in her broadcloth suit and the sailor in his blue
serge, yet their relationship drew them together. In former days she
would have repudiated it with scorn; now her enlarged and wandering
sympathies went out to this man with cousinly interest.
She talked freely to him of her fears with regard to her brother, of
her failing health, if means might be taken to protect Chelda and
Derrice from the knowledge of their connection with the criminal,
until at last, warned of the flight of time by the sun dipping lower
behind the pines, she rose. "We must go," she said, regretfully, "but
remember, I want to see more of you. I have not much longer to live.
The doctors say I am mistaken, but I don't believe them. I know what
this thumping, fluttering heart means. Come often to French Cross while
I am here,--you and your wife, of course."