IN WHICH DAVID THRYNG MEETS AN ENEMY
The next day David gave his attention to the letters which he found
awaiting him. One was from Doctor Hoyle in Canada. He had but just
returned from a visit to England, and it was full of news of David's
family there.
"Your two cousins and your brother are gone with their regiments to
South Africa," he wrote. "They are jubilant to be called to active
service, as they ought to be, but your mother is heartbroken over their
departure. You stay where you are, my boy. She is glad enough to have
you out of England now, and far from the temptation which besets youth
in times of war. It has already caused a serious blood-letting for Old
England. I have grave doubts about this contention. In these days there
ought to be a way of preventing such disaster. Write to your mother and
comfort her heart,--she needs it. I was careful not to betray to her
what your condition has been, as I discovered you had not done so. Hold
fast and fight for health, and be content. Your recuperative power is
good."
David was filled with contrition as he opened his mother's letter, which
was several weeks old and had come by way of Canada, since she did not
know he had gone South. For some time he had sent home only casual
notes, partly to save her anxiety, and partly because writing was
irksome to him unless he had something particularly pleasant to tell
her. His plans and actions had been so much discussed at home and he had
been considered so censurably odd--so different from his relatives and
friends in his opinions, and so impossible of comprehension (which
branded him in his own circle as being quite at fault)--that he had long
ago abandoned all effort to make himself understood by them, and had
retired behind his mask of reserve and silence to pursue his own course
undisturbed. Thus, at best, an occasional perfunctory letter that all
was well with him was the sum total of news they received. Thryng had no
money anxieties for his family. The needs of his mother and his
sister--not yet of age--were amply provided for by a moderate annuity,
while his brother had his position in the army, and help from his uncle
besides. For himself, he had saved enough, with his simple tastes and
much hard work, to tide him over this period of rest.
David sat now and turned his mother's letter over and over. He read and
reread it. It was very sad. Her splendid boys both gone from her, one
possibly never to return--neither of them married and with no hope of
grandchildren to solace her declining years. "Stay where you are,
David," she wrote; "Doctor Hoyle tells us you are doing well. Don't, oh,
don't enter the army! One son I have surrendered to my country's
service; let me feel that I still have one on whom I may depend to care
for Laura and me in the years to come. We do not need you now, but some
day we may."
David's quandary was how to give her as much of his confidence as filial
duty required without betraying himself so far as to arouse the
antagonistic comment of her immediate circle upon his course.
At last he found a way. Telling her he did not know how soon he might
return to Canada, he requested her to continue to address him there. He
then filled his letter with loving thoughts for her and Laura, and a
humorous description of what he had seen and experienced in the "States"
and the country about him, all so foreign and utterly strange to her as
to be equal to a small manuscript romance. It was a cleverly written
letter, so hiding the vital matters of his soul, which he could not
reveal even to the most loving scrutiny, that all her motherly intuition
failed to read between the lines. The humorous portions she gave to the
rector's wife,--her most intimate friend,--and the dear son's love
expressed therein she treasured in her heart and was comforted.
Then David rode away up the mountain without descending to his little
farm. He craved to get far into the very heart of the wildest parts,
for with the letters the old conventional and stereotyped ideals seemed
to have intruded into his cabin.
He passed the home of Hoke Belew and stopped there to see that all was
well with them. The rose vine covering the porch roof was filled with
pink blossoms, hundreds of them swinging out over his head. The air was
sweet with the odor of honeysuckle. The old locust tree would soon be
alive with bees, for it was already budded. He took the baby in his arms
and saw that its cheeks were growing round and plump, and that the young
mother looked well and happy, and he was glad.
"Take good care of them, Hoke; they are worth it," he said to the young
father, as he passed him coming in from the field.
"I will that," said the man.
"Can you tell me how to reach a place called 'Wild Cat Hole'? I have a
fancy to do a little exploring."
"Waal, hit's sorter round about. I don't guess ye c'n find hit easy."
The man spat as if reluctant to give the information asked, which only
stimulated David all the more to find the spot.
"Keep right on this way, do I?"
"Yas, you keep on fer a spell, an' then you turn to th' right an' foller
the stream fer a spell, an' you keep on follerin' hit off an' on till
you git thar. Ye'll know hit when you do git thar, but th' still's all
broke up."
"Oh, I don't care a rap about the still."
"Naw, I reckon not. Better light an' have dinner 'fore you go on.
Azalie, keep the doc to dinner. I'm comin' in a minute," he called to
his wife, who stood smiling in the doorway.
David willingly accepted the proffered hospitality, as he had often done
before, knowing it would be well after nightfall ere he could return to
his cabin, and rode back to the house.
While Azalea prepared dinner, Hoke sat in the open door and held his
baby and smoked. David took a splint-bottomed chair out on the porch and
smoked with him, watching pleasantly the pride of the young father, who
allowed the tiny fist to close tightly around his great work-roughened
finger.
"Look a-thar now. See that hand. Hit ain't bigger'n a bumble-bee, an'
see how he kin hang on."
"Yes," said David, absently regarding them. "He's a fine boy."
"He sure is. The' hain't no finer on this mountain."
Azalea came and looked down over her husband's shoulder. "Don't do
that-a-way, Hoke. You'll wake him up, bobbin' his arm up an' down like
you a-doin'. Hoke, he's that proud, you can't touch him."
"You hear that, Doc? Azalie, she's that sot on him she's like to turn me
outen the house fer jes' lookin' at him. She 'lows he'll grow up a
preacher, on account o' the way he kin holler an' thrash with his fists,
but I tell her hit hain't nothin' but madness an' devilment 'at gits in
him."
With a mother's superior smile playing about her lips, she glanced
understandingly at David, and went on with her cooking. As they came in
to the table, she called David's attention to a low box set on rockers,
and, taking the baby from her husband's arms, carefully placed him,
still asleep, in the quaint nest.
"Hoke made that hisself," she said with pride. "And Cassandry, she made
that kiver."
Thryng touched the cover reverently, bending over it, and left the
cradle rocking as he sat down at Hoke's side and began to put fresh
butter between his hot biscuit, as he had learned to do. His mother
would have flung up her hands in horror had she seen him doing this, or
could she have known how many such he had devoured since coming to
recuperate in these mountain wilds.
The home was very bare and simple, but sweet and clean, and love was in
it. To sit there for a while with the childlike young couple, enjoying
their home and their baby and the hospitality generously offered
according to their ability, warmed David's heart, and he rode away
happier than he came.
With mind absorbed and idle rein, he allowed his horse to stray as he
would, while his thoughts and memory played strange tricks, presenting
contrasting pictures to his inward vision. Now it was his mother reading
by the evening lamp, carelessly scanning a late magazine, only half
interested, her white hair arranged in shining puffs high on her head,
and soft lace--old lace--falling from open sleeves over her shapely
arms; and Laura, red-cheeked and plump, curled, feet and all, in a great
lounging chair, poring over a novel and yawning now and then, her dark
hair carelessly tied, with straight, straying ends hanging about her
face as he had many a time seen her after playing a game of hockey with
her active, romping friends.
His mother and Laura were the only ones at home now, since the big elder
brother was gone. Of course they would miss him and be sad sometimes,
but Laura would enjoy life as much as ever and keep the home bright with
youth. Even as he thought of them, the room faded and his own cabin
appeared as he had seen it the day before, through the open window, with
Cassandra moving about in her quiet, gliding way, haloed with light.
Again he would see a picture of another room, all white and gold, with
slight French chairs and tables, and couches and cushions, and
candelabra of quivering crystals, with pale green walls and gold-framed
paintings, and a great, three-cornered piano, massive and dark, where a
slight, fair girl sat idly playing tinkling music in keeping with
herself and the room, but quite out of keeping with the splendid
instrument.
He saw people all about her, chatting, laughing, sipping tea, and eating
thin bread and butter. He saw, as if from a distance, another man,
himself, in that room, standing near the piano to turn her music, while
the tinkling runs and glib, expressionless trills wove in and out, a
ceaseless nothing.
She spent years learning to do that, he thought, and any amount of
money. Oh, well. She had it to spend, and of what else were they
capable--those hands? He could see them fluttering caressingly over the
keys, pink, slender, pretty,--and then he saw other hands, somewhat
work-worn, not small nor yet too large, but white and shapely. Ah! Of
what were they not capable? And the other girl in coarse white homespun,
seated before the fire in Hoke Belew's cabin, holding in her arms the
small bundle--and her smile, so rare and fleeting!
He saw again the handsome sullen youth in Bishop Towers' garden,
regarding him over the hedge with narrowed eyes, and his whole nature
rebelled and cried out as before, "What a waste!" Why should he allow it
to go on? He must thrash this thing out once for all before he returned
to his cabin--the right and the wrong of the case before he should see
her again, while as yet he could be engineer of his own forces and hold
his hand on the throttle to guide himself safely and wisely.
Could he succeed in influencing her to set her young lover's claims one
side? But in his heart he knew if such a thing were possible, she would
not be herself; she would be another being, and his love for her would
cease. No, he must see her but little, and let the tragedy go on even as
the bishop had said--go on as if he never had known her. As soon as
possible he must return and take up his work where he could not see the
slow wreck of her life. A heavy dread settled down upon him, and he rode
on with bowed head, until his horse stumbled and thus roused him from
his revery.
To what wild spot had the animal brought him? David lifted his head and
looked about him, and it was as if he had been caught up and dropped in
an enchanted wood. The horse had climbed among great boulders and paused
beneath an enormous overhanging rock. He heard, off at one side, the
rushing sound of a mountain stream and judged he was near the head of
Lone Pine Creek. But oh, the wildness of the spot and the beauty of it
and the lonely charm! He tied his horse to a lithe limb that swung above
his head and, dismounting, clambered on towards the rushing water.
The place was so screened in as to leave no vista anywhere, hiding the
mountains on all sides. Light green foliage overhead, where branches
thickly interlaced from great trees growing out of the bank high above,
made a cool, lucent shadowiness all around him. There was a delicious
odor of sweet-shrub in the air, and the fruity fragrance of the dark,
wild wake-robin underfoot. The tremendous rocks were covered with the
most exquisite forms of lichen in all their varied shades of richness
and delicacy.
He began carefully removing portions here and there to examine under his
microscope, when he noticed, almost crushed under his foot, a pale
purple orchid like the one Cassandra had placed on his table. Always
thinking of her, he stooped suddenly to lift the frail thing, and at the
instant a rifle-shot rang out in the still air, and a bullet meant for
his heart cut across his shoulders like a trail of fire and flattened
itself on the rock where he had been at work. At the same moment, with a
bound of tiger-like ferocity and swiftness, one leaped toward him from a
near mass of laurel, and he found himself grappling for life or death
with the man who fired the shot.
Not a word was spoken. The quick, short breathing, the scuffling of feet
among the leaves, and the snapping of dead twigs underfoot were the only
sounds. Had the youth been a trained wrestler, David would have known
what to expect, and would have been able to use method in his defence.
As it was, he had to deal with an enraged creature who fought with the
desperate instinct of an antagonist who fights to the death. He knew
that the odds were against him, and felt rising within him a wild
determination to win the combat, and, thinking only of Cassandra, to
settle thus the vexed question, to fight with the blind passion and the
primitive right of the strongest to win his mate. He gathered all his
strength, his good English mettle and nerve, and grappled with a grip of
steel.
This way and that, twisting, turning, stumbling on the uneven ground,
with set teeth and faces drawn and fierce, they struggled, and all the
time the light tweed coat on David's back showed a deeper stain from his
heart's blood, and his face grew paler and his breath shorter. Yet a joy
leaped within him. It was thus he might save her, either to win her or
to die for her, for should Frale kill him, she would turn from him in
hopeless horror, and David, even in dying, would save her.
Suddenly the battle was ended. Thryng's foot turned, on a rounded stone,
causing him to lose his foothold. At the same instant, with terrible
forward impetus, Frale closed with him, bending him backward until his
head struck the lichen-covered rock. The purple orchid was bruised
beneath him, and its color deepened with his blood. Then Frale rose and
looked down upon the pallid, upturned face and inert body, which lay as
he had crushed it down. As he stood thus, a white figure, bareheaded and
alone, came swiftly through the wall of laurel which hid them and
pausing terror-stricken in the open space, looked from one to the other.
[Illustration: _"I take it back--back from God--the promise I gave you
there by the fall." Page 171._]
For an instant Cassandra waited thus, as if she too were struck dead
where she stood. Then she looked no more on the fallen man, but only at
Frale, with eyes immovable and yet withdrawn, as if she were searching
in her own soul for a thing to do, while her heart stood still and her
throat closed. Those great gray eyes, with the green sea depths in them,
began to glow with a cruel light, as if she too could kill,--as if they
were drawing slowly from the deep well of her being, as it were, a sword
from its scabbard wherewith to cut him through the heart. Her hand stole
to her throat and pressed hard. Then she lifted it high above her head
and held it, as if in an instant more one might see the invisible sword
flash forth and strike him. Frale cried out then, "Don't, don't curse
me, Cass," and lifted his arm to shield his face, while great beads of
moisture stood out on his face.
"It's not for me to curse, Frale." Her voice was low and clear. "Curses
come from hell, like what you been carrying in your heart that made you
do this." Her voice grew louder, and her hand trembled and shut as if it
grasped something. "I take it back--back from God--the promise I gave
you there by the fall." Then, looking up, her voice grew low again,
though still distinct. "I take that promise back forever, oh, God!" Her
hand dropped. The cruel light died slowly out of her eyes, and she
turned and knelt by the prostrate man, and began pulling open his coat.
Frale took one step toward her.
"Cass," he said, with shaking voice, "I'll he'p you."
Her hands clinched into David's coat as she held it. "Go back. Don't you
touch even his least finger," she cried, looking up at him from where
she knelt like a creature hurt to the heart, defending its own. "You've
done your work. Take your face where I never can see it again."
He still stood and looked down on her. She turned again to David, and,
thrusting her hand into his bosom, drew it forth with blood upon it.
"I say, you Frale!" she cried, holding it toward him, quivering with the
ferocity she could no longer restrain, "leave here, or with this blood
on my hand I'll call all hell to curse you."
Frale turned with bowed head and left her there.