The Call of the Air
In the dawn-blink the gray dawn-blink, Pemrose Lorry sat before her
radio instruments. All night long, when she was not out searching upon
the mountain, she had been sending out the call-letters of every
station, near-by, within her New England district, seeking to get one
where she “came in strong enough” upon the air, to ask whether any one
had seen a girl upon a bay horse passing.
At last came the answer from one mountain farm, “blanked out”, at first,
by a whining in the set.
“Bah! like chickens squealing—that tube-howling!” she murmured restively
to herself—and dropped her head, with a dry sob, upon her receiver, for
she remembered how Una had once laughed at that simile.
But the air had played true. Her call had gone home, home to hearts
among the Green Mountains. That young farmer had not even a telephone.
Radio was his one ear, listening afar to the world’s pulse. “Mr.
Grosvenor’s daughter—only daughter!” He flung himself upon a tired
farmhorse. A new Revere, he galloped to the next farm—to the lonely one
beyond that. He held up every belated pedestrian.
Among these mountaineers whom the lost girl had entertained at her
flower party, were strugglers whom her father, out of his munificence,
had helped; now, it was a loan obtained on easy terms for one who wanted
to fight Nature for a farm and oust the “growing” rocks with backaches,
again it was a mortgage paid up on the eve of foreclosure. “We’ll find
his daughter, for him, if she’s above ground,” so stern men pledged
themselves.
And, here and there, the mountains burned with lights, following upon
that call of the air.
But, as yet, no signal had been sent up to say that she was found.
During the earlier part of the night, following upon the arrival of
Sanbie and his lantern, Guardian and girls had sought up and down, but
without a clue. Una was not in camp. She was nowhere. Girl and horse had
vanished in the darkness as if the mountain swallowed them.
“Perhaps she got distracted with the excitement—the terror—of the fire
and started to ride home—all that distance,” suggested one and another
of the girls blankly.
Pemrose shook her head: “Never! She never would have done that. Una is
timid and fanciful, doesn’t depend on herself very much—has never
depended on herself—but to ride off, and leave me—us—in danger fighting
fire....” The girl shook her dew-wet head again, choking.
And the Camp Fire sisters admitted that her play-marrow, heart of her
heart, knew her best.
“But, still....” Here came the Guardian’s ordeal, from which she must
not flinch, but which, at the bitter moment, she would rather have died
than face. “But, still I had better go down myself to the horse-farm and
telephone her home. Her parents have just got back.”
And now, in the dawn-blink Mr. Grosvenor was expected here, at any
minute. The Guardian and Sanbie, in whose young heart the laugh seemed
forever frozen black by the consciousness that he had better have let
all the choice “stock” on the mountainside perish than incur this loss,
were out searching slope and stream-edge hopelessly again.
Weary girls, purple-lipped from exhaustion—heavy-lidded—white-cheeked,
had been condemned, as they felt it, to rest, or try to rest, a little.
Pemrose flatly rebelled. “If anything, has happened to Una, I don’t want
to live,” she said in her passionate, tearless way. “I—I shouldn’t want
to live on,” with a quaver, “but I suppose—they’d make me.”
Who was to enforce the boon of Life? Her father—her other
joke-fellow—play-fellow—Treff?
There was a sudden sound of hoofs without the camp, hoofs slipping upon
rolling stones—striking flinty flashes out of the dawn, the pale,
primrose dawn?
Pemrose was at the door, feeling suffocated.
A haggard youth threw himself off a lame horse. It was not Sanbie.
“Treff-ff!”
The boy as he saw her face, held out his arms to her. She threw herself
into them. She caught him by the shoulders convulsively. And in the dawn
the tears came—washed her blue eyes in a silent flood, a silent,
helpless stream.
“Treff!”
“Una! Have you found—her?” His voice was hoarse.
“No.” The girl shook him. “You-ou! How did _you_ know? Have you—heard—”
“Anything about her—no! But I got your radio. Cut in when you were
talking with Station Y.V.Z. that farmer-fellow. Picked up enough, just
enough to know who was missing. Oh—heavens!” The young aviator threw up
his hands, rocking, groaning—looking as if the destruction of his plane
by fire had been a light “note”, compared to this. “Dad—you see he had
been telling me things—s-such things!” he finished lamely.
“W-what had he been telling—you?” Through the girl’s lips, bruised by
suffering, the whisper could scarcely creep.
“Merciful hop.... I mean don’t ask me; I don’t know where—how—to begin.
He only got back from his fishing trip last night—Dad.”
“Yes?”
“And he got me so worked up—talking, talking—that I couldn’t sleep, so I
was just making an owl’s night over the outfit—radio—for fun, you know—”
the young fellow threw out his hands again—“when I tuned in on your talk
with the other station. After midnight then,” he licked his dry lips,
“but I made a howling dash for the nearest farm, borrowed that ‘plug’,”
pointing to a lathered, drooping horse—“at night, wouldn’t trust the
plane.... Water! Is there any?” He caught at the collar of his khaki
shirt.
“Oh! heavens—if I could only—begin to tell you, b-but—but I feel
up-choked.” He drained the last drop of water.
“Don’t be a mope.” Pemrose grinned it at him, in fury. “Una!... Una!”
“Well, you know that little figure we saw, queer little figure on
horseback, the day—the day I flew over the Gap, stampeded the
outfit—woman I said looked as if she wanted it ‘here’?” He touched his
forehead.
“Yes! Oh! I don’t know why, but, somehow, I’ve been thinking of her, on
and off—all night. The—Little Lone Lady—all the names they give her!”
The girl’s teeth were just chattering now.
“I mentioned her to Dad last evening, described her, you know—the slight
deformity, the big, queer eyes, made you feel as if she had a
‘nick-in-the-neck’ somehow—a peculiarity within, as without—oh-h! I’ve
met her once or twice on the trail—since—then.” He panted heavily.
“And—and Dad he just leaped to his feet and caught at the camp table, so
that he pulled it over: ‘I’ll bet my life,’ he said, ‘I’ll bet my living
body! it’s that queer stepsister of Grosvenor’s—back—again ... not that
I would have called her queer long ago,’ he went on; ‘she had some
strange gifts—powers—that may be as natural as radio; she influenced all
our young set, in which she was, with them; she had a way of telling
what was going on inside us, boy, what we were thinking of—and sometimes
what was going to happen to us, too, that took our breath away.’
“Then—my gracious! he described her as if he had seen her only
yesterday—yesterday.” The boy caught at his collar again,—at his working
throat. “She was the daughter of Uncle Dwight Grosvenor’s mother, by a
first marriage, he said. Her name was Margaret Deane.”
“They call her ‘Margot’ here—some of the mountain folk,” screamed
Pemrose.
“And she always lived with Uncle Dwight, swayed him as she swayed the
rest, but he—he’s my uncle by marriage, you know—married father’s
sister, and that sister, Aunt Carolyn, simply couldn’t bear her. And
when Una was born—this was after Dad went out West, but he heard about
it since he came back—the feeling between the two women grew, for this
peculiar step-aunt just worshiped the baby, would sit staring at it as
if she saw something akin to herself in the little mite—Una—and wanted
to bring it out.
“At last Aunt Carolyn couldn’t stand it any longer. She told Uncle
Dwight that his stepsister had got to go. She wouldn’t have her child
brought up under such influence. They were keeping it dark, until they
could find a nice home for her—but she cleared out of herself, without
saying good-by.”
“And haven’t they seen her since—oh! since long ago?” Pemrose was
staring weirdly.
“No—nor heard from her, either. She drew a little money that she had,
not enough Dad says, to support her, eked it out, he supposes by using
her strange powers in distant cities, as—as this woman has done among
the mountain people; and, in time, got to eking _them_ out by trickery;
she’d be a witch at that, he said, for she had a good education—knew
something of chemistry and physics.”
“But Una—Una—you don’t think—” Pemrose was catching at her throat now.
“Well—when I told my old Dad about that ‘elfin music’ we heard on the
old mountain—how we showed it up, played ‘choir invisible’ with tuning
forks—his lips worked for quite a while silently—you know he was a
terror at queer tricks himself—then he turned a sly cheek on me and
said: ‘That _may_ have been no crank of a musician, boy, out testing
bird-songs, or pine-songs—or pipes o’ Pan—or any of the rest of it. If
this queer little figure _is_ Margaret Deane and she’s lonely—longing to
see Una, the baby she so worshiped, and thinks the parents won’t let
her, she would be quite likely to work upon Una’s curiosity—or her
“hifalutin” imagination—in some fantastic way ... if only to pay your
Aunt Carolyn out. Or, perhaps, to get the girl off by herself into the
woods. She would have done it even when I knew her—and she isn’t likely
to have gathered balance, “a rolling stone.”’”
“But—but you don’t think—he doesn’t think—that she would go the
length—the length of carrying Una off—doing anything to her?” Pem’s
voice rose to a shriek now.
“I can’t help feeling that she has something—something to do with it.”
The boy choked. “Dad was frightened, too, when I woke him—told him. He
said for me to tear right over here— he’d follow when he got his car out
of hospital.”
“But how could she—even in the confusion of the fire? The last Dorothy
saw of Una her bucket had rolled away.”
“She managed to stupefy her in some way, slide something into
her—perhaps rubbed it on the bucket.” The boy was roughly pacing the
floor. “Got her, in a dazed state, on her horse.”
“But why—why ... such a hor-ri-ble thing—”
“Brooding resentment, perhaps,” said Treff moodily, “to get even with
her parents. Maybe a wild yearning to get Una to herself for a while.
Maybe because she has become quite unbalanced—Dad says people of her
temperament generally do.”
“But Una—” Pem was fairly screaming now, her hands clutching at the pale
air, opening, closing—“Una—why! she’ll go mad herself, carried off like
that—by a strange, wild woman—away from us all. And she’ll be so
helpless,” it was a choking sob, “any other girl, Madeline, Naomi,
Frances—even Dorothy—might think of something to do—but Una—”
“No-o, the bottom will be out of everything; she’ll just drop through.”
Treff stared gloomily out of the window. “But we’ll find her—together.”
He caught at Pemrose’s hands. “Oh-h! there isn’t cover enough on the old
mountain, nor kinks enough in the brain of that crazy creature, to
prevent.... Gosh! Automobile wheels on the road below—her father! I—I’d
rather crawl through an air hole, five thousand feet up, than have to
tell him this!” The young aviator’s neck writhed in its khaki collar.
“He idolizes Una—and his sister ... always a sore subject, Dad said!”
“That’s why-y he looked so worried that day in the sun-parlor, when Una
had a story about hearing something strange, unearthly, in the wood; she
reminded him of his stepsister.” Pemrose’s lips were uncontrollably
twitching.
“Well!” Treff was bracing himself for an ordeal, “I guess old Andrew
hasn’t let much grass grow under that car—has got here as fast as God
and gasolene would let him!”
“Andrew!” It was a new cry from the girl’s lips. “Oh! Andrew would go
through fire and water for her; she makes him think of his own daughter
that he lost away back in Scotland. And he was brought up among
mountains—wild mountains!
“He knows these hills, too—has fished among them—sent father and me the
trout, last year.” Pem’s hands were clasped against her lips, as she
watched the climbing figures. “Oh: Andrew! he can hear so far, see so
far ... it’s as if he saw into things, too.”
“He’s a canny chauffeur, anyway,” said Treff.
But it was no chauffeur who stood among them now, while Treff’s story
was repeated to Una’s stricken father; it was a Church Elder and a
passionate Highlander to boot—released from all ceremony and convention.
“Gosh! I wouldn’t give much for Margot’s chances—wretched kidnapper—if
he tracks her among the mountains and finds that she has injured Una,
directly or indirectly; he’d wring her neck, as he’d wring a hen’s,”
said Treff, half-aloud, watching the ex-chauffeur’s grim face.
But the latter was thinking of rescue, not revenge now; of the girl who
in her sweet democratic way had called him her “fuffle-daddy”, the girl
who was eye-sweet, the girl whom his wife and he had taken to their
hearts as a symbol of their own daughter.
He clasped his hands. He flung his long arms to heaven—towering among
the reassembling search party.
But the prayer which he prayed was the same which had sprung to his lips
when, a shepherd-boy among his native hills, he had missed a tender one
from his flock:
“Noo, gin onything be lost or strayed—gin ony lamb be lost or strayed,
may the Almighty in his mercies fetch it back!
“An’, noo, I’m awa’ to find her!” said Andrew, the Scot.