All this time John had been seeking Agnes. First he went the high
road to the mansion until he was sure she had not gone that way, for
if she had he would have overtaken her. Turning back he began to make
inquiries and presently heard of someone, undoubtedly she, who had been
seen walking wide of the town, past the mill, toward the mountain.
Knowing the path and divining her intention he walked in her footsteps.
The smell of Thane’s pipe was still in the air when he arrived at the
place where the fight had taken place. A thing of white in the grass
drew his eye. He picked it up and got a bad start. It was a tiny
handkerchief. By the light of a match he made out the initials A. G.
embroidered in one corner. Looking further he found a scarf that he
instantly recognized. He had particularly noticed it on their way to
the party. Now in a panic he began to examine the ground closely and
discovered extensive evidence of a human struggle. Running up and down
the path a short distance each way he came on the Cornishman’s shirt a
little to one side where the groggy owner had tossed it away. To John’s
disgust it was slimy with something that came off in his hands; as this
proved to be blood his disgust gave way to horror.
Without actually formulating the thought, because it was too dreadful
to be true, he acted under the tyranny of a fixed idea, which was that
Agnes had met with a foul disaster. The possibility was real. Lately
there had come to New Damascus a group of mill hands whose ways and
morals were alien to the community. They were bestial drinkers and had
been making a great deal of trouble.
In a state of frenzy he explored the mountain side, calling her name.
His panic rising, it occurred to him to ask at the mill among the men
who continually used the path. He found several who had been over it
within a hour or so. Someone was missing, he told them. Something
unknown had happened. Had they seen or heard anything unusual. They
became individually contemplative, made him say it all over again,
repeated it after him, thought very hard and shook their heads. Nobody
had seen or heard the least thing strange. But somebody did, by a freak
of intelligent association, remember the Cornishman. He was out there
under the water tank, speechless and weeping, not caring whether Enoch
saw him or not. Maybe something had happened to him.
John found him as indicated, with his face in his hands, water dripping
on his naked back.
“What happened to you?” John asked, shaking him.
“Gotten m’dam head knocked off,” he groaned, without moving. It was a
refrain running through him. John’s attack had made it once audible.
“Up there in the path?”
He grunted.
“Who was it?”
Faintly, though very definitely, the Cornwall beauty expressed a
passionate desire to be let alone.
“Was there a girl?” John asked.
“Huh!” said the hulk, instantly penetrated by the sound of that word.
John repeated the question.
The Cornishman stirred painfully, sat up, turned a stupidly grinning
face and nodded--yes.
“Who took her away?” John asked, thumping the body to keep the mind
afloat. “Tell me,” he said, shaking him by the hair. “Where did they
go?” he asked, kicking him in the shins.
But the Cornishman was either slyer or more stupefied than one could
imagine. He relapsed. Nothing more could be got out of him.
There now was but one rational thing to do--report to Enoch and raise a
general alarm.
From running hard with a load of dread John was almost spent when he
arrived at the mansion gate. It was shut and barred; the house was
dark and where he had expected to find alarm and commotion everything
was strangely still. Foreboding assailed him. Thinking it might be
quicker to open the gate than to climb the wall he put his hand through
and began to fumble with the latch bar inside. He was so intent upon
the effort that a certain indefinable sense one may have of another’s
invisible proximity failed to warn him of Enoch’s presence.
There was a swift, noiseless movement in the darkness and a hand
clutched him powerfully by the wrist. The physical disadvantage of his
position made him helpless. Over the vertical bars of the gate ran a
pattern of wrought iron ornamentation in the form of vine and leaves;
the interstices were irregular, with sharp edges. It was impossible to
use his free arm defensively because there was no other opening through
which he could reach far enough in. Besides, if he resisted Enoch could
instantly snap the bones of his trapped arm. He was utterly bewildered
by the circumstances. Enoch’s gesture was menacing, even terrifying in
its sinister precision, and yet John could scarcely imagine that his
intentions were destructive. So he submitted his arm passively to the
old man’s dangerous grip and spoke.
“It is I,” he said. His voice betrayed his spirit, which was at the
verge of panic. Enoch did not speak. His hold tightened. “I was trying
to let myself in to save time,” said John. “Agnes is lost. That is, I
can’t find her. I was coming to tell you.”
Enoch still did not speak.
“Perhaps she is home,” said John. “Have you seen her? If you haven’t
I’m afraid something has happened to her.”
The old man’s continued silence was unnatural and ominous. Slowly,
purposefully, he drew John’s arm further in, to almost the elbow; it
came to him unresistingly and bare, the cuffs of the coat and shirt
having caught on the vine work outside. Then he began to explore it
upward from the wrist, feeling through the flesh for the edges of the
radius and ulna bones, passing them an inch at a time between his thumb
and forefinger as if searching for something he was afraid to find.
John’s arm had once been broken in a football game at school. There
was a perceptible ridge in the radius bone at the point of fracture.
On this ridge Enoch’s fingers stopped, lost their strength and began
to tremble. At the same time the grip of his other hand around John’s
wrist began to relax in a slow, involuntary manner.
“_Aaron!_” he whispered, awesomely.
The next instant John’s arm was free and there was the sound of a body
falling on the gravel inside the gate.
Now John scaled the wall. He stopped to make sure Enoch was breathing
and to ease his form on the ground; then he ran to the mansion. His
furious alarm brought a stolid, dark woman to the door, holding a small
oil light over her head.
“Is Miss Gib at home?” he asked.
The woman shook her head.
“Does anyone know where she is?”
In a dull manner the woman shook her head again.
“Mr. Gib has fallen at the front gate,” said John. “Go to him at once
and send someone for the doctor.”
The woman put the lamp down on the floor where she stood and started
alone down the driveway, running.
“Call the servants,” said John. “You may have to carry him in.”
But she went only faster. He followed her. Before he could overtake her
she met Enoch. He could see them both clearly in the light streaming
from the doorway. The woman looked at Enoch anxiously and made as if to
touch him, solicitously. He did not exactly ignore her; he seemed not
to see her at all and walked steadily on.
John turned out of the light and passed unobserved in the darkness.
Then he ran headlong off the grounds, feeling at each step that his
knees would let him down. His emotional state was almost unmanageable.
The episode with Enoch at the gate had been not only very mysterious
but fraught with some ghastly inner meaning to which he had no clue
whatever. He knew nothing of Enoch’s obsession that he, John, was Aaron
reincarnated. He had never heard of that boyhood contest in which Enoch
broke Aaron’s arm. Therefore he could not know what it meant in Enoch’s
troubled brain to find in the arm of Aaron’s son the scar of a similar
fracture at almost precisely the corresponding place. To him it _was_
the same scar in the same arm. It was the last thing needed to fix his
hallucination and the discovery had momentarily overwhelmed his senses.
In that instant he had called John by his father’s name,--Aaron!
What did it mean? Intuitively John knew that here was the key to the
riddle. But he could not apply it. He could see that in taking Esther,
his mother, away from Enoch his father had brought upon himself
Enoch’s undying hatred. He could understand how such hatred might
naturally be transferred to the son. Only, in that case, how could he
explain the fact that until now Enoch’s attitude toward him had been
friendly or indifferent?