THE NIGHT IN THE SNOWSTORM.
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven."--_Emerson_.
All through that long, wild night David searched and shouted, to find
only snow and silence.
Through the darkness and the falling flakes he could not see more than
a foot ahead, and when he would stumble over a stone or the fallen
trunk of a tree, he would stoop down and search through the drifts with
his bare hands, thinking perhaps that she might have fallen, and not
finding her, he would again take up his fruitless search, while cold
fear gnawed at his heart.
At home in the warm farm house, sat the Squire who had done his duty.
The consciousness of having done it, however, did not fill him with
that cheerful glow of righteousness that is the reward of a good
conscience--on the contrary, he felt small. It might have been
imagination, but he felt, somehow, as if his wife and Kate were
shunning him. Once he had tried to take his wife's hand as she stood
with her face pressed to the window trying to see if she could make out
the dim outline of David returning with Anna, but she withdrew her hand
impatiently as she had never done in the thirty years of their married
life. Amasy's hardness was a thing no longer to be condoned.
Furthermore, when the clock had struck eleven and then twelve, and yet
no sign of David or Anna, the Squire had reached for his fur cap and
announced his intention of "going to look for 'em." But like the
proverbial worm, the wife of his bosom had turned, and with all the
determination of a white rabbit she announced:
"If I was you, Amasy, I'd stay to hum; seems as if you had made almost
enough trouble for one day." With the old habit of authority, strong
as ever, he looked at the worm, but there was a light in its eyes that
warned him as a danger signal.
They were alone together, the Squire and his wife, and each was alone
in sorrow, the yoke of severity she had bowed beneath for thirty years
uncomplainingly galled to-night. It had sent her boy out into the
storm--perhaps to his death. There was little love in her heart for
Amasy.
He tried to think that he had only done his duty, that David and Anna
would come back, and that, in the meantime, Louisa was less a comfort
to him, in his trouble, than she had ever been before. It was, of
course, his trouble; it never occurred to him that Louisa's heart might
have been breaking on its own account.
The Squire found that duty was a cold comforter as the wretched hours
wore on.
Sanderson had slunk from the house without a word immediately after
Anna's departure. In the general upheaval no one missed him, and when
they did it was too late for them to enjoy the comfort of shifting the
blame to his guilty shoulders.
The professor followed Kate with the mute sympathy of a faithful dog;
he did not dare attempt to comfort her. The sight of a woman in tears
unnerved him; he would not have dared to intrude on her grief; he could
only wait patiently for some circumstance to arise in which he could be
of assistance. In the meantime he did the only practical thing within
his power--he went about from time to time, poked the fires and put on
coal.
Marthy would have liked to discuss the iniquity of Lennox Sanderson
with any one--it was a subject on which she could have spent hours--but
no one seemed inclined to divert Marthy conversationally. In fact, her
popularity was not greater that night in the household than that of the
Squire. She spent her time in running from room to room, exclaiming
hysterically:
"Land sakes! Ain't it dreadful?"
The tension grew as time wore on without developments of any kind, the
waiting with the haunting fear of the worst grew harder to bear than
absolute calamity.
Toward five o'clock the Squire announced his intention of going out and
continuing the search, and this time no one objected. In fact, Mrs.
Bartlett, Kate and the professor insisted on accompanying him and
Marthy decided to go, too, not only that she might be able to say she
was on hand in case of interesting developments, but because she was
afraid to be left in the house alone.
* * * * * *
Toward morning, David, spent and haggard, wandered into a little
maple-sugar shed that belonged to one of the neighbors. Smoke was
coming out of the chimney, and David entered, hoping that Anna might
have found here a refuge.
He was quickly undeceived, however, for Lennox Sanderson stood by the
hearth warming his hands. The men glared at each other with the
instinctive fierceness of panthers. Not a word was spoken; each knew
that the language of fists could be the only medium of communication
between them; and each was anxious to have his say out.
The men faced each other in silence, the flickering glare of the
firelight painting grotesque expressions on their set faces. David's
greater bulk loomed unnaturally large in the uncertain light, while
every trained muscle of Sanderson's athletic body was on the alert.
It was the world old struggle between patrician and proletarian.
Sanderson was an all-round athlete and a boxer of no mean order. This
was not his first battle. His quick eye showed him from David's
awkward attitude, that his opponent was in no way his equal from a
scientific standpoint. He looked for the easy victory that science,
nine times out of ten, can wrest from unskilled brute force.
For, perhaps, half a minute the combatants stood thus.
Then, with lowered head and outstretched arms, David rushed in.
Sanderson side-stepped, avoiding the on-set. Before David could
recover himself, the other had sent his left fist crashing into the
country-man's face.
The blow was delivered with all the trained force the athlete possessed
and sent David reeling against the rough wall of the house.
Such a blow would have ended the fight then and there for an ordinary
man; but it only served to rouse David's sluggish blood to white heat.
Again he rushed.
This time he was more successful.
True, Sanderson partially succeeded in avoiding the sledge-hammer fist,
though it missed his head, it struck glancingly on the left shoulder.
numbing for the moment the whole arm. Sanderson countered as the blow
fell, by bringing his right arm up with all his force and striking
David on the face. He sank to his knees, like a wounded bull, but was
on his feet again before Sanderson could follow up his advantage.
David, heedless of the pain and fast flowing blood, rushed a third
time, catching Sanderson in a corner of the room whence he could not
escape.
In an instant, the two were locked in a death-like grip.
To and fro they reeled. No sound could be heard save the snapping of
brands on the hearth, the shuffle of moving feet and the short gasps of
struggling men.
In that terrible grasp, Sanderson's strength was as a child's.
He could not call into play any of the wrestling tricks that were his,
all he could do was to keep his feet and wait for the madman's strength
to expend itself.
The iron grip about his body seemed to slacken for a moment. He
wriggled free, and caught the fatal underhold.
By this new grip, he forced David's body backward till the larger man's
spine bade fair to snap.
David felt himself caught in a trap. Exerting all his giant strength
he forced one arm down between their close-locked bodies, and clasped
his other hand on Sanderson's face, pushing two fingers into his
eyeballs.
No man can endure this torture. Sanderson loosed his hold. David had
caught him by the right wrist and the left knee, stooping until his own
shoulders were under the other's thigh. Then, with this leverage, he
whirled Sanderson high in the air above his head and threw him with all
his force down upon the hearth.
A shower of sparks arose and the strong smell of burning clothes, as
Sanderson, stunned and helpless, lay across the blazing fire-place.
For a moment, David thought to leave his vanquished foe to his own
fate, then he turned back. What was the use? It could not right the
wrong he had done to Anna. He bent over Sanderson, extinguished the
fire, pulled the unconscious man to the open door and left him.
It came to David like an inspiration that he had not thought of the
lake; the ice was thin on the southern shore below where the river
emptied. Suppose she had gone there; suppose in her utter desolation
she had gone there to end it all? Imagination, quickened by suspense
and suffering, ran to meet calamity; already he was there and saw the
bare trees, bearing their burden of snow, and the placid surface, half
frozen over, and on the southern shore, that faintly rippled under its
skimming of ice, something dark floating. He saw the floating black
hair, and the dead eyes, open, as if in accusation of the grim
injustice of it all.
He hurried through the drifted snow, as fast as his spent strength
would permit, stumbling once or twice over some obstruction, and
covered the weary distance to the lake.
About a hundred yards from the lake Dave saw something that made his
heart knock against his ribs and his breath come short, as if he had
been running. It was Anna's gray cloak. It lay spread out on the snow
as if it had been discarded hastily; there were footprints of a woman's
shoes near by; some of them leading toward the lake, others away from
it, as if she might have come and her courage failed her at the last
moment. The cape had not the faintest trace of snow on its upturned
surface. It must, therefore, have been discarded lately, after the
snowstorm had ceased this morning.
Dave continued his search in an agony of apprehension. The sun faintly
struggled with the mass of gray cloud, revealing a world of white. He
had wandered in the direction of a clump of cedars, and remembered
pointing the place out to her in the autumn as the scene of some boyish
adventure, which to commemorate he had cut his name on one of the
trees. Association, more than any hope of finding her, led him to the
cedars--and she was there. She had fallen, apparently, from cold and
exhaustion. He bent down close to the white, still face that gave no
sign of life. He called her name, he kissed her, but there was no
response--it was too late.
Dave looked at the little figure prostrate in the snow, and despair for
a time deprived him of all thought. Then the lifelong habit of being
practical asserted itself. Unconsciousness from long exposure to cold,
he knew, resembled death, but warmth and care would often revive the
fluttering spark. If there was a chance in a thousand, Dave was
prepared to fight the world for it.
He lifted Anna tenderly and started back for the shed where he had
fought Sanderson. Frail as she was, it seemed to him, as he plunged
through the drifts, that his strength would never hold out till they
reached their destination. Inch by inch he struggled for every step of
the way, and the sweat dripped from him as if it had been August. But
he was more than rewarded, for once. She opened her eyes--she was not
dead.
He found them all at the shed--the Squire, his mother, Kate, the
professor and Marthy. There was no time for questions or speeches.
Every one bent with a will toward the common object of restoring Anna.
The professor ran for the doctor, the women chafed the icy hands and
feet and the Squire built up a roaring fire. Their efforts were
finally rewarded and the big brown eyes opened and turned inquiringly
from one to another.
"What has happened? Why are you all here?" she asked faintly; then
remembering, she wailed: "Oh, why did you bring me back? I went to the
lake, but it was so cold I could not throw myself in; then I walked
about till almost sunrise, and I was so tired that I laid down by the
cedars to sleep--why did you wake me?"
"Anna," said the Squire, "we want you to forgive us and come back as
our daughter," and he slipped her cold little hand in David's. "This
boy has been looking for you all night, Anna. I thought maybe he had
been taken from us to punish me for my hardness. But, thank God, you
are both safe."
"You will, Anna, won't you? and father will give us his blessing." She
smiled her assent.
"I say, Squire, if you are giving out blessings, don't pass by Kate and
me."
In the general kissing and congratulation that followed, Hi Holler
appeared. "Here's the sleigh, I thought maybe you'd all be ready for
breakfast. Hallo, Anna, so he found you! The station agent told me
that Mr. Sanderson left on the first train for Boston this morning.
Says he ain't never coming back."
"And a good thing he ain't," snapped Marthy Perkins--"after all the
trouble he's made."
THE END.