BETWEEN TWO LIGHTS
Zita had run on. Her young heart was full of the agony of distress for
her father. He was the one object in the world to whom her heart clung.
She had lost her mother early, and had been accordingly brought up by
her father, who had been father and mother to her in one. She had no
brothers, no sisters. He had been to her father, mother, brothers, and
sisters in one. The young heart is full of love. It is of a clinging
nature. It may not be disposed to demonstrativeness, but it loves, it
clings; and it is in despair when the object to which it has clung, the
person it has loved, fails.
For some little while, for more than the fortnight of which Zita had
spoken, she had observed that her father was ill, that his powers were
declining.
She had fought against the terrible thought that she would lose him,
whenever with a flash of horror it had shot through her brain, had
contracted her heart.
Her father! The daily associate; the one person to whom she could
always speak with frankness, with whom she had had but one interest;
the one person who had watched over her, cared for her, loved her—that
he should be suffering, that he might be removed! The idea was more
than her young heart could bear. Cheap Jacks are human beings, they
have like feelings to us who buy not of Cheap Jacks, but of respectable
tradesmen. Cheap Jacks' daughters, though they have not had the
privileges of the moral and intellectual training that have ours, are
nevertheless—human beings. We admit this tacitly, but do not think out
the truth such an admission contains—that they have in their natures
the same mixed propensities, in their hearts the same passions as
ourselves—as have our own children.
Now this poor child ran, her pulses beating; as she ran, with every
rush of blood through her pulses, a fire shot in electric flashes
before her eyes. She continuously cried, 'Help! help! My father! my
daddy!'
Then her breath failed her. She tried to run, but was forced to stay
her feet and gasp for breath. She could not maintain her pace as well
as call for assistance.
There was a roaring as of the sea over a bar when the tide is coming
in. It was the roar of her thundering blood in her ears.
She had taken the van lantern and had set it down by her father on the
side of the bank. As she was forced to halt, she looked back. A shudder
came over her. She could not see the light. Had it expired, and with
it, had the flickering light of life expired in her father?
Then she stepped partly down the bank, and now she saw the light. From
the top she had not been able to see it owing to the slope, and for
a slight curve in the direction of the canal. The light that burned
by her father's side was still there. And before her she could see
the sparks in the direction she was pursuing. A strange medley of
lights—were there two or three or more? She could not count, owing to
her excitement and the tears and sweat that streamed over her eyes.
She ran on, as the furious throbbing of her heart was allayed, as her
breath returned.
Suddenly—a crash, a flash as of lightning, and Zita knew not where she
was, and for how long she had been in a state of semi-consciousness.
The poor child, running with full speed, had run against one of the
barriers set up across the top of the embankment for the prevention of
its employment by wheeled vehicles.
She had struck her head and chest against the bars, and had been thrown
backwards, partly stunned, completely dazzled by the blow. For some
minutes she lay on the bank confused and in pain. Then she picked
herself up, but was unable to understand what had happened. She again
went forward, and now felt the bars of timber. She put her hands to
them and climbed. She was sobbing with pain and anxiety; through her
tears she could see the lights in front of her magnified with prismatic
rays shooting from them. On reaching the top of the barrier she looked
behind her, and again saw the feeble light from her father's lantern.
Now her senses returned to her, which for a few moments had been
disturbed by the blow and fall.
She was running to obtain help, shelter for her dear father. From the
top rail she cried, 'Help! help! My daddy! My poor daddy! Help! help!'
She listened. She thought she heard voices. Hurt, wearied, breathless,
she hoped that the assistance she had invoked was coming to her aid.
Should she remain perched where she was, and wait till the lights in
front drew nearer to her?
Then the fear came over her that she might not have been heard. The man
to whom she had spoken—he with the one lantern to his stirrup—had
addressed her roughly, had shown no good feeling, no desire to assist.
Was it likely that he had changed his mind, and was now returning?
She was confident that the man whom she had arrested had carried but
a single lantern to his foot. Now as her pulses became more even in
their throb, she was positive that there were more lights than one
before her. She looked behind her. There was one light by her father,
that was stationary. There were several before her; and they were in
the strangest movement, flickering here and there, changing places, now
obscured, now shining out, now low, now high, now on this side, now on
that.
She leaped from her place on the rail and ran on.
Then, coming on an unctuous place in the marl, where a horse's hoofs
had been, where, perhaps, it had slipped, and, running in a bee-line,
regardless where she went, ignorant of a slight deviation from the
direct line in the course of the bank, she went down the side, and
plunged into the ice-cold water.
There was a stake, a post in the water. She clung to that, and, holding
it, struggled to get out. In so doing, she noticed a sort of eye in the
post, a mortice-hole that pierced it, and as at that moment some of the
clouds had parted, she saw the grey sky and a star shine through this
hole. By means of this post, Zita, whose strength was almost spent, was
able to draw herself from out of the water. But so exhausted was she,
that, on reaching the top of the bank, she was constrained to stop and
pant for breath.
Still the thought of her suffering, perhaps dying, father, urged her
on. She saw the dancing lights close before her, she heard voices.
She felt the embankment tremble under her feet. Surely some violent
commotion was taking place before her; but what it could be she had
neither time nor power to conjecture.
Then there went by overhead, invisible in the darkness, a train of
wild geese, going south for the winter, and as they flew they uttered
loud, wild cries, like the barking of hounds in the clouds—a horrible,
startling sound fit to unnerve any who were unaware of the cause.
For a moment she stood still, listening to the aerial ghostly sounds.
She held her breath. Then again she ran.
As Zita ran, it seemed to her that assuredly she saw but two lights.
There must have been but two, and they were stationary. She tried to
call, but her voice failed her; her throat was parched. She could but
run.
Next moment the lights blazed large on her, and then she grasped a
foot. 'Help! help!'