to act that way before Mrs. Thornton died--that night when she came home
with Thornton, and he and the Flopper were behind the trellis. Thornton!
Had Thornton anything to do with it, after all? No--Madison had laughed
at it then, and he had much more reason to laugh at it now. Thornton was
still in Chicago, and hadn't been back to Needley.
For three weeks this sort of thing occupied a considerably larger share
of Madison's thoughts than he was wont to allow even the most vexing
problems to disturb his usually imperturbable and complacent self--and
then one afternoon, he smiled a little grimly, and, leaving the hotel,
started along the road toward the Patriarch's cottage.
"What Helena needs is--a jolt!" said Madison to himself. "I guess her
trouble is one of those everlasting feminine kinks that all women since
Adam's wife have patted themselves on the back over, because they think
it's a dark veil of mystery that is beyond the acumen of brute man to
understand. That's what the novelists write pages about--wade right in
up to the armpits in it--feminine psychology--great! And the women smile
commiseratingly at the novelist--the idea of a man even pretending to
understand them--kind of a blooming merry-go-round and everybody happy!
Feminine psychology! I guess a little masculine kick-up is about the
right dope! What the deuce have I been standing for it for? I don't have
to--I don't have to go around making sheep's-eyes at her--what? She
wants grabbing up and being rushed right off her feet _à la_ Roost,
and--hello, Mr. Marvin, how are you to-day!"--he had halted beside a
middle-aged man who was sitting on the grass at the roadside.
"Better, Mr. Madison, better," returned the man, heartily. "Really very
much better."
"Fine!" said Madison.
"We all saw the Patriarch to-day--God bless him!" said Marvin. "We've
been waiting out there two days, you know--that woman with the bad back
got up off her stretcher."
"Splendid!" exclaimed Madison enthusiastically. "And the glorious thing
about it is that there's no reason why everybody can't be cured if
they'll only come here in the right spirit."
"That's so!" agreed Marvin. "None are so blind as those who won't
see--they're in utter blackness compared with the physical blindness of
that grand and marvelous man. I'm going home myself in another
week--better than ever I was in my life. It was stomach with me, you
know--doctors said there wasn't any chance except to operate, and that
an operation was too slim a chance to be worth risking it." He got up
and laughed, carefree, joyous. "God-given place down here, isn't it?
Clean--that's it. Clean air, clean-souled people, clean everything you
see or do or hear. Say, it kind of opens your eyes to real living,
doesn't it--it's the luxuries and the worries and the pace and the
damn-fooleries that kill. Well, I'm going along back now to get some of
Mrs. Perkins' cream--clean, rich cream--and homemade bread and
butter--imagine me with an appetite and able to eat!"
He laughed again--and Madison joined him in the laugh, slapping him a
cordial good-by on the shoulder.
Madison started on once more--but now his progress was slow, frequently
interrupted, for he stopped a score of times to chat and exchange a few
words with those whom he passed on the road. There were cheery faces
everywhere--even those of the sufferers who straggled out along the
road coming back from the Patriarch's cottage. It was a cheery
afternoon, warm and balmy and bright--everything was cheery. The
farmers, their vocations for the moment changed, waved their whips at
him and shouted friendly pleasantries as they drove by with those who
were unable to make the trip from the Patriarch's unaided.
Madison began to experience a strange, exhilarating sense of uplift upon
him, a sort of rather commendatory and gratified feeling with himself.
Marvin had hit it pretty nearly right with his "clean-wholesomeness"
idea--it kind of made one feel good to be a part of it. Madison, for the
time being, relegated Helena and his immediate mission to a secondary
place in his thoughts.
Young girls, young men, middle-aged men, elderly women, all ages of both
sexes he passed as he went along; some alone, some in couples, some in
little groups, some on crutches, some in wheel-chairs, some walking
without extraneous aid--he had turned into the woods now, and he could
see them strewn out all along the wagon track under the cool,
interlacing branches overhead.
Now he stepped aside to let a wagon pass him, and answered the farmer's
call and the smile of the occupants in kind; now some one stopped to
tell him again the story of the afternoon--there had been cures that day
and the Patriarch had come amongst them. Some laughed, some sang a
little, softly, to themselves--all smiled--all spoke in glad, hopeful
words, clean words--there seemed no base thought in any mind, only that
cleanness, that wholesomeness that had so appealed to Marvin--that
somehow Madison found he was taking a delight in responding to, and,
because it afforded him whimsical pleasure, chose to pretend that he was
quite a genuine exponent of it himself.
He reached the end of the wagon track, and paused involuntarily on the
edge of the Patriarch's lawn as he came out from the trees. Like low,
lulling music came the distant, mellowed noise of waters, the breaking
surf. And the cottage was a bower of green now, clothed in ivy and
vine--upon the trellises the early roses were budding--fragrance of
growing things blended with the salt, invigorating breeze from the
ocean. And upon the lawn, flanked with its sturdy maples, all in leaf,
that toned the sunshine in soft-falling shadows, stood, or sat, or
reclined on cots, the supplicants who still tarried though the Patriarch
had gone. And now one came reverently out of the cottage door from that
room that was never closed; now another went in--and still another.
Madison smiled suddenly, broadly, with immense satisfaction and
contentment--and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the
single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across
the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving--and that was Helena beside
her.
Madison recalled instantly the object of his visit--and instantly he
whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How
alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon her head;
there wasn't any need of rouge for color in the oval face; the dark eyes
were soft and deep and glorious; and she sat there in a little white
muslin frock as dainty as a medallion from a master's brush.
"Say," said Madison to himself, "say, I never quite got it before. Say,
she's--she's lovely--and that's my Helena. It's no wonder
Thornton stared at her that day we touched him for the fifty,
and"--suddenly--"damn Thornton!"
But the buggy was beside him now, and he lifted his hat as Mamie Rodgers
pulled up the horse.
"Good afternoon, Miss Rodgers," he said. "Good afternoon, Miss Vail--how
is the Patriarch to-day?"
"He is very well, thank you," Helena answered--and being custodian of
the whip brushed a fly off the horse's flank.
"I was just coming out to pay you a little visit," remarked Madison,
trying to catch her eye.
"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" said Helena sweetly, still busy with the fly.
"Mamie is going to take me for a drive--and afterwards we are going to
her house for tea."
"Oh!" said Madison, a little blankly.
Helena smiled at him, nodded, and touched the horse with the whip--and
then she leaned suddenly out toward him, as the buggy started forward.
"Oh, Mr. Madison," she called, "I forgot to tell you! I had a letter
from Mr. Thornton to-day--and he's coming back to-morrow."
--XVII--
IN WHICH HELENA TAKES A RIDE
The wind kissed Helena's face, bringing dainty color to her cheeks,
tossing truant wisps of hair this way and that, as the car swept onward.
But she sat strangely silent now beside Thornton at the steering wheel.
It seemed to her that she was living, not her own life, not life as she
had known and looked upon it in the years before, but living, as it
were, in a strange, suspended state that was neither real nor unreal, as
in a dream that led her, now through cool, deep forests, beside clear,
sparkling streams where all was a great peace and the soul was at rest,
serene, untroubled, now into desolate places where misery had its birth
and shame was, where there was fear, and the mind stood staggered and
appalled and lost and knew not how to guide her that she might flee from
it all.
At moments most unexpected, as now when motoring with Thornton in the
car that he had brought back with him on, his return to Needley, when
laughing at the Flopper's determined pursuit of Mamie Rodgers, when
engaged in the homely, practical details of housekeeping about the
cottage, there came flashing suddenly upon her the picture of Mrs.
Thornton lying on the brass bed in the car compartment that night, every
line of the pale, gentle face as vivid, as actual as though it were once
more before her in reality, and in her ears rang again, stabbing her
with their unmeant condemnation, those words of sweetness, love and
purity that held her up to gaze upon herself in ghastly, terrifying
mockery.
It stupified her, bewildered her, frightened her. She seemed, for days
and weeks now, to be drifting with a current that, eddying, swirling,
swept her this way and that. How wonderful it was, this life she was now
leading compared with the old life--so full of the better things, the
better emotions, the better thoughts that she had never known before!
How monstrous in its irony that she was leading it to _steal_, that she
might play her part in a criminal scheme for a criminal end! And yet,
somehow, it did not all seem sham, this part she played--and that very
thought, too, frightened her. Why was it now that Madison's
oft-attempted, and as oft-repulsed, kiss upon her lips was something
from which she shrank and battled back, no longer from a sense of pique
or to bring him to his knees, but because something new within her,
intangible, that she did not understand, rose up against it! Why did she
do this--she, who had known the depths, who had known no other guide or
mentor than the turbulent, passionate love she had yielded him and in
her abandonment had once found contentment! Was her love for him gone?
Or, if it was not that--what was it?
What was it? A week, another, two more, a month had slipped away since
Thornton had returned, and there had been so much of genuineness crowded
into this sham part of hers that it seemed at times the part itself was
genuine. She had come to love that little room of hers, love it for its
dear simplicity, the white muslin curtains, the rag mat, the patch-quilt
on the bed; those daily duties of a woman, that she had never done
before, that she had at first looked at askance, brought now a sense of
keen, housewifely pride; the gentle patience of the Patriarch, his love
for her, his simple trust in her had found a quick and instant response
in her own heart, and daily her affection for him had grown; and there
was Thornton--this man beside her, whose companionship somehow she
seemed to crave for, who, in his grave, quiet manliness, seemed a sort
of inspiration to her, who seemed in a curious way to appease a new
hunger that had come to her for association, for contact with better
thoughts and better ideals.
What was it? Environment? Yes; there must be something in that. It was
having its effect even on Pale Face Harry and the Flopper. What was it
that Harry, a surprisingly lusty farmhand now, had said to her a week or
so ago: "Say, Helena, do you ever feel that while you was trying to kid
the crowd about this living on the square, you was kind of getting
kidded yourself? I dunno! I ain't coughed for a month--honest. But it
ain't only that. Say--I dunno! Do you ever feel that way?"
Yes; there must be something in environment. The old life had never
brought her thoughts such as these, thoughts that had been with her now
almost since the first day she had come to Needley--this disquiet, this
self-questioning, these sudden floods of condemnatory confusion; and,
mingling with them, a startled thrill, a strange, half-glad,
half-premonitory awakening, a vague pronouncement that innately it might
be true that she was not what she _really_ was--but what all those
around her held her to be--what Mrs. Thornton had said she was--and--
Her fingers closed with a quick, fierce pressure on the arm-rest of her
seat--and she shifted her position with a sudden, involuntary movement.
Thornton, a road-map tacked on a piece of board and propped up at his
feet, raised his head, and, self-occupied himself, had apparently not
noticed her silence, for he spoke irrelevantly.
"I hope you won't mind if the road is a bit rougher than usual for a few
miles," he said; "but you know we decided we didn't like the looks of
the weather at tea-time, and according to the map, which labels it
'rough but passable,' this is a short cut that will lop off about ten
miles and take us back to Needley through Barton's Mills."
"Of course, I don't mind," Helena answered. "How far are we from
Needley?"
"About thirty-five miles or so," Thornton replied. "Say, an hour and a
half with any kind of going at all. We ought to be back by nine."
Helena nodded brightly and leaned back in her seat. Rather than
objecting to the short cut that Thornton had begun to negotiate, the
road, now that she gave her attention to it, she found to be quite the
prettiest bit she had seen in the whole afternoon's run, where, in the
rough, sparsely settled north country, all was both pretty and a
delight--miles and miles without the sign of even a farmhouse, just the
great Maine forests, so majestic and grand in their solitude, bordering
the road that undulated with the country, now to a rise with its
magnificent sweep of scenery, now to the cool, fresh valleys full of the
sweet pine-scent of the woods. They had explored much of it together in
the little 'run-about,' nearly every day a short spin somewhere; to-day
a little more ambitious run--the whole afternoon, and tea, a picnic tea,
an hour or more back, in a charming glade beside a little brook.
"Oh, this is perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed; and then, with a
breathless laugh, as a bump lifted her out of her seat: "It _is_
rough--isn't it?"
Thornton laughed and slowed down.
"I don't fancy it's used much, except in the winter for logging. But if
the map says we can get through, I guess we're all right--there's about
an eight mile stretch of it."
It was growing dusk, and the shadows, fanciful and picturesque; were
deepening around them. Now it showed a solid mass of green ahead, and,
like a sylvan path, the road, converging in the distance, lost itself in
a wall of foliage; now it swerved rapidly, this way and that, in short
curves, as though, like one lost, it sought its way.
A half hour passed. Thornton stopped the car, got down and lighted his
lamps, then started on again. The going had seemed to be growing
steadily worse--the road, as Thornton had said, was little more indeed
than a logging trail through the heart of the woods; and now, deeper in,
with increasing frequency, the tires slipped and skidded on damp, moist
earth that at times approached very nearly to being oozy mud.
Silence for a long while had held between them. It was taking Thornton
all his time now to guide the car, that, negotiating fallen branches
strewn across the way, bad holes and ruts, was crawling at a snail's
pace.
"'Rough but passable'!" he laughed once, clambering back to his seat
after clearing away a dead tree-trunk from in front of them. "But
there's no use trying to go back, as we must be halfway through, and it
can't be any worse ahead than it's been behind. I'd like to tell the
fellow that made this map something!"
And then upon Helena, just why she could not tell, began to steal an
uneasiness that frightened her a little. It had grown suddenly,
intensely dark--quicker than the slow, creeping change of dusk blending
softly into night. Sort of eerie, it seemed--and a wind springing up and
rustling through the branches made strange noises all about. They seemed
to be shut in by a wall of blackness on every hand, except ahead where,
like great streaming eyes of fire, the powerful lamps shot out their
rays making weird color effects in the forest--huge tree-trunks loomed a
dead drab, like mute sentinels, grim and ominous, that barred their way;
now, in the full glare, the foliage took on the softest fairy shade of
green; now, tapering off, heavier in color, it merged into impenetrable
black; and, with the jouncing of the car, the light rays jiggling up and
down gave an unnatural semblance as of moving, animate things before
them, a myriad of them, ever retreating, but ever marshalling their
forces again as though threatening attack, as though to oppose the car's
advance.
What was there to be afraid of? She tried to laugh at herself--it was
perfectly ridiculous. A little bit of rough road--the forest that she
loved around her--even if it was very dark. They would come out
eventually somewhere on the trunk-road to Barton's Mills--that was all
there was to it. Meanwhile, it was quite an experience, and she had
every confidence in Thornton. She glanced at him now. It was too dark to
get more than an indistinct outline of the clean-cut profile, but there
was something inspiriting in the alert, self-possessed, competent poise
of his body as he crouched well forward over the wheel, his eyes never
lifting from the road ahead.
They appeared to be going a little faster now, too--undoubtedly the road
was getting better. What was there to be afraid of? It didn't make it
any more pleasant for Thornton, who was probably reproaching himself
rather bitterly for having been tempted by the "short cut," to have her
sit and mope beside him!
She began to hum an air softly to herself--and then laughingly sang a
bar or two aloud.
Thornton shot a quick, appreciative glance at her and nodded, joining in
the laugh.
"By Jove!" he said approvingly. "That sounds good to me. I was afraid
this beastly stretch, bumping and crawling along in the dark, was making
you miserable."
"Miserable!" exclaimed Helena. "Why, the idea! What is there to be
miserable about? We'll get through after a while--and the road's better
now than it was anyhow, isn't it?"
"Better?"
"You're running faster."
"Oh--er--yes, of course," said Thornton quickly. "I wasn't thinking of
what I said. I--"
He stopped suddenly, as Helena lifted her hand to her face.
"Why, it's beginning to rain," she said.
"Yes; I'm afraid so," he admitted. "I was hoping we would get out of
here before it came."
"Oh!" said Helena.
"And the worst of it is," he added hurriedly, "there's no top to the
car, and you've no wraps."
"Perhaps it won't be anything more than a shower," said Helena
hopefully.
"Perhaps not," he agreed. "Anyway"--he stopped the car, and took off his
coat--"put this on."
"No--please," protested Helena. "You'll need it yourself."
"Not at all," said Thornton cheerily. "And that light dress of yours
would be soaked through in no time."
He held the coat for her, and she slipped it on--and his hand around her
shoulder and neck, as he turned the collar up and buttoned it gently
about her, seemed to linger as it touched her throat, and yet linger
with the most curious diffidence--a sort of reverence. Helena suddenly
wanted to laugh--and, quick in her intuition, as suddenly wanted to cry.
It wasn't much--only a little touch. It didn't mean love, or passion, or
feeling--only that, unconsciously in his respect, he held her up to gaze
upon herself again in that mocking mirror where all was sham.
They started on--Thornton silent once more, busy with the car; Helena,
her mind in riot, with no wish for words.
The rain came steadily in a drizzle. She could feel her dress growing
damp around her knees--and she shivered a little. How strangely
wonderful the rain-beads looked on their background of green leaves
where the lamps played upon them--they seemed to catch and hold and
reflect back the light in a quick, passing procession of clear,
sparkling crystals. But it was raining more heavily now, wasn't it? The
drops were no longer clinging to the leaves, they were spattering dull
and lustrelessly to the ground. And Thornton seemed suddenly to be in
trouble--he was bending down working at something. How jerkily the car
was moving! And now it stopped.
Thornton swung out of his seat to the ground.
"It's all right!" he called out reassuringly. "I'll have it fixed in a
minute."
It was muddy enough now, and the ruts, holding the rain, were regular
wheel-traps. Apart from any other trouble, Thornton did not like the
prospect--and, away from Helena now, his face was serious. He cranked
the engine--no result. He tried it again with equal futility--then,
going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting
the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all
right. He tried the crank again--the engine, like some cold, dead thing,
refused to respond.
"What's the matter?" Helena asked him from the car.
"I don't know," Thornton answered lightly. "I haven't found out yet--but
don't you worry, it's nothing serious. I'll have it in a jiffy."
Helena's knowledge of motor cars and engine trouble was not
extensive--she was conversant only with the "fool's mate" of motoring.
"Maybe there's no gasoline," she suggested helpfully.
"Nonsense!" returned Thornton, with a laugh. "I told Babson to see that
the tank was full before he brought the car around--he wouldn't forget a
thing like that."
Thornton, nevertheless, tested the gasoline tank.
"Well?" inquired Helena, breaking the silence that followed.
"There is no--gasoline," said Thornton heavily.
Neither spoke for a moment. There was no sound but the steady drip from
the leaves. Then Helena forced a laugh.
"Isn't it ridiculous!" she said. "That is what one is always making fun
of others for. I--I don't think it's going to stop raining--do you? And
we're miles and miles from anywhere. What _do_ people do when they're
caught like this?"
Thornton did not answer at once. Bitterly reproachful with himself, he
stood there coatless in the rain. If it had been a breakdown, an
accident that was unavoidable, a little of the sting might have gone out
of the situation--but _gasoline_! This--from rank, blatant, glaring,
inexcusable idiocy. Not on his part perhaps--but that did not lessen his
responsibility. They were miles, as she had said, from anywhere--four
miles at least in either direction from the main road, and as many more
probably after that from any farmhouse--he remembered that for half an
hour before they had turned into the "short cut" they had seen no sign
of habitation--and what lay in the other direction, ahead, would in all
probability be the same--they were up in the timber regions, in the
heart of them--she couldn't walk miles in the rain with the roads in a
vile condition, and growing viler every minute as the rain sank in and
the mud grew deeper. And then another thought--a thought that came now,
sharp and quick, engulfing the mere discomfort of a miserable night
spent there in the woods--the clatter of busy, gossiping tongues seemed
already to be dinning their abominable noises in his ears. And that he,
that he--yes, it seemed to sweep upon him in a sudden, overmastering
surge, the realization that the delight and joy of her companionship
through the month that was gone was love that leaped now into fierce,
jealous flame, maddened at a breath that would smirch her in the eyes of
others--that _he_ should be the cause of it! "What _do_ people do when
they're caught like this?"--in their innocence there seemed an
unfathomed depth of irony in her words, but as he unconsciously repeated
them they cleared his brain and brought him suddenly to face the
immediate practical problem that confronted them. What was to be done?
"Shall--shall I get out?" she called to him, a hint of reminder in her
tones that she had spoken to him before and received no answer.
Thornton moved back to the side of the car.
"Miss Vail," he said contritely, "I--I don't know what to say to you for
getting you into this. I--"