It was a sore and weary author who at length, having postponed the
inevitable as long as possible, crept into the bunk where his host and
the two sons slept audibly, with Benoix beside them. The latter stirred
a little, and greeted the newcomer.
"That you, Channing? This is the real thing in democracy, at last!" he
murmured drowsily, and slept again as soundly as the others.
But Channing, though every aching muscle cried aloud for oblivion, could
not sleep. He tossed and turned, listened to the heavy breathing of the
men beside him, listened to lighter sounds from the far end of the cabin
where Jacqueline was also tasting true democracy in company with the two
mountain women. He had lingered outside the door until the three women
came in from the lean-to where they had prepared for the night,
Jacqueline a tall sprite between her squat, thick-bodied companions, a
heavy rope of bronze hair over each shoulder, small feet showing bare
and white beneath the severe robe of gray flannel which was the nearest
approach to a negligée known to Mrs. Kildare's daughters. The atmosphere
of Storm did not lend itself to the art of the negligée.
Moonlight shone full upon her, and Channing, watching with quickened
heart-beat, saw her lips move as she gave a quick, shy glance toward the
bunk where he was supposed to be already sleeping.
"She's telling me good night, the darling!" he thought, quite correctly,
and blew her an unseen kiss.
There were times of late when the author almost forgot to analyze his
own sensations. The Overmind that observed and registered for future
reference had grown a trifle careless. Occasionally Channing felt, and
acted, quite like an ordinary young man in love.
Now he lay quite still, that he might hear that low breathing across the
room, trying to distinguish Jacqueline's from the rest. He had taken the
precaution to open both doors of the cabin wide, after his hosts were
safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled
keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or
the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without
picturesque piquancy for a collector of impressions.
Beside him, Benoix and the other man slept with the abandon of tired
animals, and the sound of their sleeping somewhat disturbed the poetry
of the night. On the whole, however, he preferred them sleeping to
waking. He sent his thoughts, on tiptoe, as it were, across the room.
How exquisite she was, with her slim bare feet, and the hint of a chaste
little ruffle showing at throat and wrist! Those drowsy, dewy eyes--the
fluttering pulse in her soft throat--her clinging lips, which kissed as
unconsciously as a child's until suddenly they were edged with fire....
Channing's thoughts became so insistent that perhaps they wakened her.
There was a slight stirring in the bunk across the room, a slender gray
shape appeared on the edge of it, feeling about on the floor for shoes.
Still barefoot, with shoes in her hand, Jacqueline crept to the door.
Channing, all his fatigues forgotten, very carefully extricated himself
from among the slumberers and followed. He congratulated himself upon
the fact that his preparations for the night had been extremely sketchy,
had in fact consisted merely in removing his coat and riding-boots. Once
safe outside the cabin, he pulled on the boots, smoothed his hair with
his fingers, knotted the handkerchief more becomingly about his throat,
and went in pursuit of Jacqueline.
He had not far to go. She was sitting on the top rail of the nearest
fence, her back toward him, framed in the center of the setting moon.
She turned as he came upon her with a startled gasp:
"O-oh! You, Mr. Channing!"
One of the sweetest things about the girl to Channing was the queer
little tender respect with which she always treated him. Even in their
most intimate moments, he was still the great man, the superior order of
being. She could not possibly have called him "Percival." Though he
chided her for this attitude of respect, it did not displease him.
"I could not sleep in there," she explained, rather breathlessly, "so I
came out to see the last of the moon. Of course I must go in again at
once."
"Must you? Why, I wonder? I couldn't sleep either. Let's stay where we
are!"
She asked, blushing: "But would that be quite proper?"
This first hint of conventionality in the girl surprised and rather
touched him. He saw that she was quite painfully aware of the prim
little wrapper, the unbound hair, the bare feet thrust into her shoes.
"Why, you little gray nun! Outdoors is quite as 'proper' as
indoors--rather more so, in fact. It's the onlooker that makes things
proper or improper, and here there are no onlookers.--This is all too
wonderful to waste in sleeping!"
It was wonderful. The girl drew a breath of keen, cold ozone into her
lungs.
"Isn't it queer," she said with a chuckle, "that mountains smell so
sweet and mountaineers--don't? Ugh! fancy living in that stuffy cabin!
All very well to sleep there once or twice for a lark, but to live
there--!" She rubbed her bare ankles together unhappily. "Mr. Channing,
do you suppose they were mosquitoes--?"
"Ssh!" he said. "I hold with the ancient belief that 'nothing exists
until it is named.' There'll be several more nights of those bunks, you
know.--If you find log-cabins open to suspicion, you ought to try the
picturesque thatched-roof cots of Mother England! These mountaineers
cling to the old traditions."
They laughed together, her slight barrier of shyness gone down in the
intimacy of sharing a common peril.
"But were you ever so close to the moon, before?" she asked dreamily.
"It is right face to face with us now. I believe we could step off into
it."
"As if it were a great golden door, opening into--who knows
where?--Suppose we try, Jacqueline? If we follow this ravine at our
feet, it will lead us to the edge of the mountain, and so to the
threshold of the moon, without a doubt. Only we must hurry if we are to
get there before the door closes."
She shook her head. "Too late! Long before we reached the end of the
ravine the moon would be gone, and then it would be dark as a pocket."
"Pooh! Who's afraid of the dark?" scoffed the city dweller in his
ignorance.
"It wouldn't be safe," she said seriously. "We'd never be able to find
our way back in the dark. Of course, if we had a lantern--" She dimpled
up at him suddenly. "Do you know, there is a lantern hanging just inside
the cabin door. I saw it."
Channing tiptoed back and secured the lantern, his heart thumping rather
hard, not entirely for fear of discovery. They had come at last to the
moment that had been in both their minds since the start of the journey,
beneath all their gaiety and laughter--that final desired solitude of
the heights.
They descended into the shallow ravine--a mere fissure it was in the
surface of the mountain--crossing as they went an almost perpendicular
cornfield of which Jacqueline made mental note as a landmark. They spoke
in whispers, as if fearing to disturb the immemorial silence of the
hills. Here and there a bird woke at their passing, and called a sleepy
note of warning to its mate. Leaves rustled to the touch of the wind
that is never still in high places. Near at hand sounded a sudden eerie
cry, and Jacqueline drew close to Channing with a shudder.
"Suppose we meet a wildcat, or a bear, or something? What would we do?"
"Run," he said laconically; but he put a protective arm about her, which
was perhaps what Jacqueline needed. It is usually in the presence of Man
that Woman allows herself the luxury of timidity.
Soon they ceased to talk at all. He held her very close as they walked,
and sometimes they stood for long moments without moving, embraced. No
talk of Philip or other extraneous matters came between their kisses
now. The young trees with which the ravine was filled hedged them in
close and secret, a friendly guard; and Channing wished to abandon the
expedition to the moon, being well content where he was. But Jacqueline,
impelled by some blind instinct, urged him on toward the open, where a
rim of gold, growing less and ever less, still showed between the
interlacing branches.
Underbrush impeded them, tore at her skirts and her bare ankles, till
Channing picked her up in his arms and carried her; not easily, for he
was little taller than herself, but very willingly. So with his warm and
fragrant burden, he emerged upon the edge of the mountain. At their feet
was a sheer drop of many hundred feet into a cañon, where a stream
whispered, with the reflection of tumbled stars in its bosom. All about
lay a wide prospect of lesser hills, covered with a mantle of soft and
feathery verdure that stirred very lightly, as if the mountains were
breathing in sleep. As they gazed, the rim of the moon sank slowly,
slowly, till there was nothing left but starlight.
Jacqueline murmured, "Isn't it lucky we brought the lantern? Let's light
it now." Her voice was rather tremulous.
"Why, sweetest?" He seated himself in the fragrant pine-needles, and
drew her down beside him. "Look, little girl, how high we are above
earth; out of men's knowledge, all the world asleep. We might be gods on
high Olympus. 'You and I alone in Heaven dancing'"--he finished softly
that most beautiful passage out of "Marpessa."
But the Overmind chose that moment to return to duty. It suggested to
Channing that he sounded a trifle histrionic, a trifle as though low
music were about to be played by the orchestra. He caught himself
murmuring inwardly, "What a setting! What a perfect setting!"
"For what?" inquired the Overmind, not at all in disapproval but with a
sort of impersonal interest.
Just then the gifted Mr. Channing would have traded temperaments with
the dullest lout that ever lost his head over a woman.
His self-consciousness reacted upon Jacqueline. All her earlier shyness
returned. She drew the prim little wrapper down over her ankles, and sat
quite stiffly erect, submitting to his embrace, but no longer returning
it.
"I think we'd better be going back now," she said. "Suppose Philip were
to wake up and miss us?"
Channing had an odd and perfectly irrelevant thought of that bulge in
the clergyman's hip-pocket.
"Bother Philip! You'd suppose the man was a sort of watch-dog. I believe
you're afraid of me to-night," he teased, turning her face to his.
Her lips trembled as he kissed them. "It is so dark," she whispered.
"Little goose! Why should the darkness make a difference to you and me?"
"I don't know--but it does." Suddenly she pushed him away, and jumped to
her feet. "Give me the matches, Mr. Channing. I want to light the
lantern and go back."
He obeyed with a shrug, wondering just where and how he had blundered. A
sense of artistic incompleteness mingled with a keen personal sense of
chagrin. Did the girl care less for him than he had thought? Or was it
merely the instinct of self-preservation that had warned her?
Now that the blood ran more coolly in his veins, he blushed to realize
that the instinct had been right.
They went back into the ravine, which, as Jacqueline had prophesied, had
become as dark as a pocket. Without the lantern they could not have seen
a foot ahead of them, and even with the lantern their way was not easy.
They stumbled along, still hand-in-hand and silent; but it was no longer
the delicious, thrilling silence of the earlier adventure. The glamour
of it seemed to have departed with the moon.
Jacqueline, stiff with an embarrassment she did not understand (she
thought it the fault of the negligée and the stockingless feet) was
eager to get back to the shelter of the crowded cabin. Channing was by
this time as eager as herself, having discovered that riding-boots are
not the most comfortable equipment for mountain tramping.
"There's our cornfield, at last!" said the girl, and both heaved sighs
of relief.
They climbed laboriously toward the outline of corn stalks against the
starlit sky, with a darker outline looming behind; but as they came into
better sight of the cabin, she gave a cry of dismay.
"It's all lighted. Oh, Mr. Channing! They've missed us!"
"Damn!" said the author.
At that moment voices reached them: loud, drunken voices, mingled with
laughter, and a snatch of song.
"Why--why!" muttered Channing, blankly. "That can't be our cabin!"
Nor was it. They had trusted to the wrong landmark.
They turned and hurried down into the ravine again. But Channing
stumbled, and the sound reached the quick ears of the mountaineers
above. There was a shout, in a voice suddenly sobered.
"Who's down thar?"
It was followed by the sharp ping of a bullet.
"Good gad, but they're shooting!" gasped Channing.
"They certainly are," said the girl, with a giggle. "It must be a still
or something, and they think we're revenue officers!"
"Wh-what shall we do?"
"Run," she quoted him, laughing, and seizing his hand suited the action
to the word. She seemed perfectly unafraid. "They won't get our range in
the dark. Isn't this exciting?"
But the bullets followed them, too close for comfort.
"It's the lantern!" exclaimed Channing, and was about to drop it when
the girl seized it out of his hand.
"Here--don't do that! We'd be wandering about in this ravine all night
without it."
She looked at her companion in sheer surprise. It was her first
experience of the type of man who loses his head in the presence of
danger. Her voice became all at once quite motherly and kind.
"It's all right. You go ahead and I'll carry the lantern. They're
probably too drunk to follow us," she reassured him.
Channing, to the after mortification of his entire life, obeyed without
demur.
"It's all right," she repeated. "But go as fast as you can."
Shots were flying thick and fast about the lantern she held at arm's
length. More than one grazed her closely.
"You great cowards up there!" she cried out in sudden anger. "Do you
know you're shooting at a girl?"
There was a sudden silence. Then the shouts began again with a new note.
"A gal, be ye? Boys, hit's a female down thar. Come on up, gal! Let's
see what ye look like."
But the shots ceased, and the shouts came no nearer.
"Just as I thought--they 're too drunk to follow us," she said
triumphantly. "Better get out of this neighborhood, though. Hurry on,
Mr. Channing!"
"I'm afraid I can't," he said faintly. "You go without me."
She turned the light of the lantern full upon him, and saw that he was
holding to a tree, swaying where he stood. There was a dark stain on his
breeches, just above the knee, which spread even as she looked.
Without a word, she turned and began to run up the hillside again.
"Where are you going?" he cried.
"To get help. You are hurt."
"Those drunken brutes? Never!"
"They'll help us. I'm a woman."
"All the more reason--" he conquered his growing weakness, and put what
force he could into his voice. "Jacqueline, I forbid you to go! Come
here!"
She obeyed, wringing her hands. "But I don't know what to do for you!"
she quavered.
"Listen! I must walk as far as I can, and when I'm done, you leave me,
and run ahead for help. We can't be far from our own cabin now."
Channing had resumed his manhood, and it did not occur to the girl to
argue with him. He was not a coward. He had merely been startled
momentarily out of his self-control, unaccustomed as he was to physical
danger. She realized this thankfully. The literary life does not prepare
a man for the emergency of finding himself a target for bullets out of
the dark.
Arm-in-arm they stumbled along the ravine. Soon he was obliged to lay an
arm across her sturdy young shoulders, leaning upon her more heavily
with each step. She felt the effort of his every motion, was aware of
the labored breath with which he fought back his weakness. Still he
struggled on. If she had loved him before, she adored him now.
"Oughtn't I to bandage it, or something?"
"No," he gasped. "It's not an artery, I think. Must get on. Almost
done."
She was terrified. All the tenderness she had denied him that night rose
in her, an overwhelming flood. As he faltered she urged him forward with
crooning words, with caresses. "Just a little farther, that's my brave
dear! We're almost there. It can't be far now, darling, beloved, my
precious!"
He grew too faint to understand her words, but her will toward the last
carried him on, step by step, she staring desperately at the skyline,
looking for the cornfield that was to be her landmark.--Could they have
passed it? Surely they had not come so long a way as this?
Suddenly the thought occurred to her that in starting back they might
have entered the wrong ravine. There must be many such shallow fissures
on the mountain-side. She heard near at hand the trickling of a spring,
and stopped aghast. They had passed no spring on the way out. She was
too thoroughly country-bred not to have taken note of running water
instinctively, as animals do.
"Lost!" she whispered to herself; lost in wild country, between midnight
and dawn, with a wounded man on her hands and--no stockings on! The
choking giggle she gave was more than half hysteria.
Then, without a word, Channing pitched forward on his face.
That steadied her. In a moment she had brought water in her cupped hands
from that providential spring, had found his pocket-knife, ripped up his
trousers-leg, and bandaged the wound as coolly as Jemima herself might
have done it, though the sight of the blood nauseated her. She bathed
his face with a wet handkerchief, but his eyelids merely fluttered once
and were still again. In a panic she lifted his head to her bosom,
trying to warm his cheeks; kissed him on the lips again and again,
violently, begging him to wake and speak to her. It is a pity that the
collector of impressions was unable to appreciate these manoeuvers.
"What shall I do? What _shall_ I do?" she moaned.
He had bade her leave him and run for help--but did she dare? Even as
she considered it, there was a rustling in the underbrush, and
startlingly near at hand sounded the eerie cry that had frightened her
earlier in the night. It did not frighten her now, oddly enough. She
regretted the pistol she had left in the cabin. Her hand tightened on
the pocket-knife, however, and she placed herself between Channing and
the direction of the sound.
"Go away! Get out of this! Scat!" she said firmly, flourishing her
lantern.
For a tense moment she waited; but the cry was not repeated. It had put
out of the question, however, any thought of leaving Channing there
defenseless. There were wild-cats in these mountains, she knew,
rattlesnakes, too, possibly bears; and even the foxes that barked far
away at intervals were not to be trusted with an unconscious human
smelling of fresh blood.
There seemed nothing better to do than shout for help, on the chance of
somebody hearing her in this wild and desolate place. Through the ravine
rang the golden voice that might one day enthrall the world, pitched to
fill a wider auditorium than it had ever filled before. From side to
side it rolled and echoed in musical cadences: "Help! Come! Somebody
please hear me! Help!"
Birds awoke with startled twittering, and various creatures of the
underbrush, which had been attracted to the light of the lantern, fled
away in terror. She sent her voice in the direction of the cabin they
had mistaken for their own. Drunk or not, there were men there, and she
needed them.
But after some time, an answer came from the other side of the ravine, a
little way beyond. A bobbing light appeared on the edge, and a faint
halloa reached her.
"What's wrong down there?"
Jacqueline shouted: "Man hurt! Bleeding! Awfully!"
The lantern bobbed rapidly downward. Presently a man came into sight,
stoop-shouldered and spectacled, and roughly dressed. He knelt beside
Channing and examined him.
"Nothing broken. Just loss of blood. That's not a bad bandage. It will
last till we get him up the hill. No need to cry, young lady," he added;
for at the first sound of that pleasant, crisp, gentleman's voice,
Jacqueline had broken into sobs. She knew that her immediate troubles
were over.