Another six months passed, and an event occurred which gave a great
shock to the little community and gave Toyner a pain of heart such as
almost nothing else could have given. Ann's father, John Markham, had a
deadly dispute with a man by the name of Walker. Walker was a
comparatively new comer to the town, or he would have known better than
to gamble with Markham as he did and arouse his enmity. The feud lasted
for a week, and then Markham shot his enemy with a borrowed fire-arm.
Walker was discovered wounded, and cared for, but with little hope of
his recovery. From all around the men assembled to seize Markham, but
half a night had elapsed, and it was found that he had made good his
escape. When the others had gone, Toyner stood alone before Ann Markham.
I have often heard what Toyner looked like in those days. Slight as his
theological knowledge might be, he was quite convinced that if religion
was anything it must be everything, personal appearance included. As he
stood before Ann, he appeared to be a dapper, rather dandified man, for
he had dressed himself just as well as he could. Everything that he did
was done just as well as he could in those days; that was the reason he
did not shirk the inexpressibly painful duty which now devolved on him.
You may picture him. His clothes were black, his linen good. He wore a
large white tie, which was the fashionable thing in that time and place.
His long moustache, which was fine rather than heavy, hung down to his
chin on either side of his mouth. He did not look like a man who would
chance upon any strong situation in life, for the strength of
circumstances is the strength of the soul that opposes them, and we are
childishly given to estimating the strength of souls by certain outward
tests, although they fail us daily.
"I have always been your friend, Ann," said Toyner sadly.
Ann tossed her head. "Not with my leave."
"No," he assented; "but I want to tell you now that if we can't get on
Markham's track I shall have to spy on you. You'll help him if you can,
of course."
"I don't know where he is," said Ann sullenly.
"I do not believe you are telling the truth" (sadly); "but you may
believe _me_, I have warned you."
People in Fentown went to sleep early. At about eleven that night all
was still and lonely about the weather-stained, unpainted wooden house
in which Ann lived.
Ann closed her house for the night. The work was a simple one: she set
her knee against the door to shut it more firmly, and worked an old nail
into the latch. Then she shook down the scant cotton curtains that were
twisted aside from the windows. There were three windows, two in the
living-room (which was also kitchen and beer-saloon) and one in the
bedroom; that was the whole of the house. There was not an article of
furniture in the place that was not absolutely necessary; what there was
was clean. The girl herself was clean, middle-sized, and dressed in
garments that were old and worn; there was about her appearance a
certain brightness and quickness, which is the best part of beauty and
grace. The very hair itself, turning black and curly, from the temples,
seemed to lie glossy and smooth by reason of character that willed that
it should lie so.
One small coal-oil lamp was the light of the house. When Ann had closed
doors and windows she took it up and went into the bedroom. Neither room
was small; there was a shadowy part round their edges which the lamp did
not brighten. In the dimmer part of this inner room was a bed, on which
a fair young girl was sleeping.
A curious thing now occurred. Ann, placing herself between the lamp and
the window, deliberately went through a pantomime of putting herself to
bed. She took care that the shadow of the brushing of her hair should be
seen upon the window-curtain. She measured the distance, and threw her
silhouette clearly upon it while she took off one or two of her outer
garments. Her face had resolution and nervous eagerness written in it,
but there was nothing of inward disquiet there; she was wholly satisfied
in her own mind as to what she was doing. It was not a very profound
mind, perhaps, but it was like a weapon burnished by constant and proper
use.
She removed her shadow from the window-curtain when she removed her lamp
to the bedside. She employed herself there for a minute or two in
putting on the clothes she had taken off, and in tightly fastening up
the hair that she had loosened; then she put out the lamp and got into
bed. The wooden bedstead creaked, and rubbed against the side of the
house as she turned herself upon it. The creaking and rubbing could be
heard on the other side of the wall.
There was a man walking like a sentry outside who did hear. It was Bart
Toyner, the constable.
After he heard the bed creak he still waited awhile, walking slowly
round the house in silence and darkness. Then, as he passed the side
where the bedroom was, there came the sound of a slight sleeping snore,
repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go in a woman's
breast.
After a while Toyner retreated with noiseless steps, standing still when
he had moved away about fifty paces, looking at the house again with
careful, suspicious eyes; then, as if satisfied, he slid back the iron
shade that covered his lantern and, lighting his own steps, he walked
away.
He had moved so quietly that the girl who lay upon the bed did not hear
him. She did not, in fact, know for certain whether he had been there or
not, much less that he had gone, so that she toilsomely kept up the
pretence of that gentle snore for half an hour or more. It was very
tiresome. Her bright black eyes were wide open as she lay performing
this exercise. Her face never lost its look of strong resolution. At
length, true to her acting, she moved her head sleepily, sighed heavily,
and relapsed into silent breathing as a sleeper might. It was the acting
of a true artist.
Half an hour more of silence upon her bed, and she crept off
noiselessly; she lifted the corner of the window-curtain and looked out.
There was not a light to be seen in any of the houses within sight,
there was not a sound to be heard except the foam at the foot of the
falls, the lapping of the nearer river, and the voice of a myriad
crickets in the grass. She opened the window silently.
"Bart," she whispered. Then a little louder, "Bart--Bart Toyner."
The one thing that she wanted just then was to be alone, and of all
people in the world Toyner was the man whom she least wanted to meet.
Yet she called him. She got out of the window and took a few paces on
one side and on the other in the darkness, still calling his name in a
voice of soft entreaty. In his old drunken days she had scorned him. She
scorned him now more than ever, but she still believed that her call
would never reach his ear in vain. In this hour of her extremity she
must make sure of his absence by running the risk of having to endure
his nearer presence. When she knew that he was not there, she took a
bundle from inside the room, shut down the window through which she had
escaped, and wrapping her head and hands in a thin black shawl such as
Indian women drape themselves with, she sped off over the dark grass to
the river.
Overhead, the stars sparkled in a sky that seemed almost black. The
houses and trees, the thick scrubby bushes and long grass, were just
visible in all the shades of monochrome that night produces.
In a few minutes she was beyond all the houses, gliding through a wood
by the river. The trees were high and black, and there was a faint
musical sound of wind in them. She heard it as she heard everything.
More than once she stopped, not fearful, but watching. She must have
looked like the spirit of primeval silence as she stood at such moments,
lifting her shawl from her head to listen; then she went on. She knew
where a boat had by chance been left that day; it was a small rough
boat, lying close under the roots of a pine tree, and tied to its trunk.
In this she bestowed her bundle, and untying the string, pushed from the
shore. She could hardly see the opposite side of the little Ahwewee in
the darkness; she rowed at once into the midst of its rapid current;
once there, she dipped her oars to steer rather than to propel. She
travelled swiftly with the black stream.
For half an hour or more she was only intent upon steering her boat.
Then, when she had come about three miles from the falls, she was in
still water, and began rowing with all her strength to make the boat
shoot forward as rapidly as before.
The water was as still now as if the river had widened and deepened into
an inland sea; yet in the darkness to all appearance the river was as
narrow, the outline of the trees on either side appearing black and high
just within sight. When the moon rose this mystery of nature was
revealed, for the river was a lake, spreading far and wide on either
side. The lake was caused by dams built farther down the stream, and
the forest that had covered the ground before still reared itself above
the water, the bare dead trees standing thick, except in the narrow,
winding passage of the original stream.
The moon rose large, very large indeed, and very yellow. There was smoke
of distant forest fires in the dry hot air, which turned the moon as
golden as a pane of amber glass. There was no fear of fire in the forest
through which the boat was passing other than that cold pretence of
yellow flames, the broken reflections of the moon on the wet mirror in
which the trees were growing. These trees would not burn; they had been
drowned long ago! They stood up now like corpses or ghosts, rising from
the deathly flood, lifeless and smooth; ghastly, in that they retained
the naked shape that they had had when alive. To the east the reflection
of the moon was seen for a mile or more under their grey outstretched
branches, and on all sides its light penetrated, showing through what a
strange dead wilderness the one small fragile boat was travelling.
Very little of the feeling of the place entered the mind of the girl who
was working at her oars with such strong, swift strokes. Every day
through the ten or fifteen miles of the dead forest a little snorting
steamboat passed, bearing market produce and passengers. The smoke of
its funnel had blasted all sense of the weird picturesqueness of the
place in the minds of the inhabitants, that is, they were accustomed to
it, and sentiment in most hearts is slowly killed by use and wont, as
this forest had been killed by the encroaching water. Ann Markham's was
not a mind which harboured very much sentiment at that period of her
life; it was a keen, quick-witted, practical mind. She was not afraid
of the solitude of the night, or of the strange shapes and lights and
shadows about her. Now that she knew for certain that she was alone and
unpursued, she was for the time quite satisfied.
A mile more down the windings of the lake, and Ann began counting the
trees between certain landmarks. Then into an opening between the trees
which could not have been observed by a casual glance she steered her
boat, and worked it on into a little open passage-way among their
trunks. The way widened as she followed it, and then closed again. Where
the passage ended, one great tree had fallen, and its trunk with
upturned branches was lying, wedged between two standing trunks, in an
almost horizontal position. On it a man was sitting, a wild, miserable
figure of a man, who looked as if he might have been some savage being
who was at home there, but who spoke in a language too vicious and
profane for any savage.
He leaned out from his branch as far as he dared, and welcomed the girl
with curses because she had not come sooner, because it was now the
small hours of the night and he had expected her in the evening.
"Be quiet, father," said the girl; "what's the use of talking like
that!" Then she held the boat under the tree and helped him to slip down
into it, where, in spite of his rage, he stretched his legs with an
evident animal satisfaction. He wallowed in the straitened liberty that
the boat gave, lying down in the bottom and gently kicking out his
cramped limbs, while the girl held tight to the trees, steadying the
boat with her feet.
It was this power of taking an evident sensual satisfaction in such
small luxuries as he was able to obtain that had alone attached Markham
to his daughter. His character belonged to a type found both among men
and women; it was a nature entirely selfish and endowed with an
instinctive art in working upon the unselfish sentiments of others--an
art which even creates unselfishness in other selfish beings.
"I came as soon as I could," she said. "I suppose you did not want me to
put Toyner on your track."
"Yee owe," said the wretched man, stretching himself luxuriously. "I've
been a-standin' up and a-sittin' down and a-standin' up since last
night, an'----" Here he suddenly remembered something. He sat up and
looked round fearfully.
"When it got dark before the moon came I saw the devil! One! I think
there was half a dozen of them! I saw them comin' at me in the air. I'd
have gone mad if they hadn't gone off when the moon rose."
"Lie still, father, until I give you something to eat," she said.
While she was unfastening her bundle, she looked about her, and saw how
the spaces of shadow between the grey branches might easily seem to take
solid form and weird shape to a brain that was fevered with excitement
of crime and of flight and enforced vigil. She had a painful thing to
tell this man--that she could not, as she had hoped, release him from
his desperate prison that night; but she did not tell him until she had
fed him first and given him drink too. She insisted upon his taking the
food first. It was highly seasoned, beef with mustard upon it, and
pickles. All the while he watched her hand with thirsty eye. When he had
gulped his food to please her, she produced a small bottle. He cursed
her when he saw its size, but all the same he held out his hand for it
eagerly and drank its contents, shutting his eyes with satisfaction and
licking his lips.
All this time she was steadying the boat by holding on to a tree with a
strong arm.
"Now it's hard on you, father, but you'll have to stay here another
night. Down at The Mills they're watching for you, and it would be sure
death for you to try and get through the swamp, even if I could take you
in the boat to the edge anywhere."
The man, who had been entirely absorbed with eating and drinking and
stretching himself, now gave a low howl of anguish; then he struggled to
his knees and shook his fist in her face. "By ---- I'll throw you out of
this 'ere boat, I will; what do yer come tellin' me such a thing as that
for? Don't yer know I'd liefer die--don't yer know that?" He brought
his fist nearer and nearer to her eyes. "Don't yer know that?"
It appeared that he would have struck her, but by a dexterous twist of
her body and a pull upon the tree she jerked the boat so that he lost
his balance, not entirely, but enough to make him right himself with
care and sit down again, realising for the time being that it was she
who was mistress of this question--who should be thrown out of the boat
and drowned.
"Of course I'll row you to The Mills, if it's to jail you want to go;
but Walker is pretty bad, they say. I think it'll be murder they'll
bring you up for; and it ain't no sort of use trying to prove that you
didn't do it!"
The miserable man put his dirty knotted hands before his face and howled
again. But even that involuntary sound was furtive lest any one should
hear. He might have shrieked and roared with all the strength that was
in him--there was no human ear within reach--but the instinct of
cowardice kept him from making any more noise than was necessary to rend
and break the heart of the woman beside him,--that, although he was only
half conscious of it, was his purpose in crying. He had a fiendish
desire to make her suffer for bringing him such news.
Ann was not given to feeling for others, yet now it was intense
suffering to her to see him shaking, writhing, moving like a beast in
pain. She did not think of it as her suffering; she transferred it all
to him, and supposed that it was the realisation of his misery that she
experienced.
At last she said: "There's one fellow up to the falls that knows a track
through the north of the marsh to sound ground; I heard him tell it one
day how he'd found it out. It's that David Brown that's been coming
round to see Christa. Christa can get the chart he made from him by
to-morrow night--I know she can. I'll try to be here earlier than I was
to-night. And I brought you strips of stuff, father, so that you could
tie yourself on to the tree and have a sort of a sleep; and I brought a
few drops of morphia, just enough to make you feel sleepy and stupid,
and make the time pass a bit quicker."
For a long while he writhed and cried, telling her that it took all the
wits that he had to keep awake enough to keep the devils off him without
taking stuff to make him sleep, and that he was sure she'd never come
back, and that he would very likely be left on the tree to rot or to
fall into the water.
All that he said came so near to being true that it caused her the
utmost pain to hear it. He was clever enough by instinct, not by
thought, to know that mere idle cries could not torture her as did the
true picture of the fears and dangers that encompassed him in his wild
hiding-place. The endurance of this torture exhausted her as nothing had
ever exhausted her before; yet all the time she never doubted but that
the pain was his, and that she was merely a spectator.
She soothed him at last, not by gentleness and caresses--no such
communication ever passed between them--but by plain, practical, hopeful
suggestions spoken out clearly in the intervals of his whining. At
length she esteemed it time to use the spur instead of stroking him any
longer. "Get up on the tree, father, and I will give you the rest of the
things when you are fixed on the branch. If Toyner's stirring again
before I get home, he'll find means to keep me from coming to-morrow
night. Climb up now. I'll give you the things. There--there isn't enough
of the morphia drops to get you to sleep, only to make you feel easy;
and here's the strips of blanket I've sewed together to tie yourself on
with. It's nice and soft--climb up now and fix yourself. It's Toyner
that will catch me, and you too, if I don't get back. Look at the
moon--near the middle of the sky."
She established him upon the branch again with the comforts that she had
promised, and then she gave him one thing more, of which she had not
spoken before. It was a bag of food that would last, if need be, for
several days.
He took it as evidence that she had lied to him in her assurance that
she could return the next night. As she moved her boat out of the secret
openings among the dead trees, she heard him whining with fear and
calling a volley of curses after her.
That her father's words were all profane did not trouble Ann in the
least. It was a meaningless trick of speech. Markham meant no more at
this time by his most shocking oaths than does any man by his habitual
expletive. Ann knew this perfectly. God knew it too.
Yet if his profanity was mechanical, the man himself was without trace
of good. There was much reason that Ann's heart should be wrung with
pity. It is the divine quality of kinship that it produces pity even for
what is purely evil. Ann rowed her boat homeward with a hard
determination in her heart to save her father at any cost.