She hurried over to the brick house across the Rothel; rapped at the
kitchen door and, upon the girl's opening it, gave the jelly to her with
Mrs. Caukins' message. She assured Ellen, who begged her to come in,
that she would run over if possible a little later in the evening. A low
whine and prolonged snuffing made themselves audible while the two
talked together in low tones at the door. They seemed to proceed from
the vicinity of the dining-room door.
"Where's Rag?" said Aileen, listening intently to the muffled sounds.
"I shut him up in the dining-room closet when I see you come up the
walk; he goes just wild to get with you any chance he can, and Mrs.
Googe told me she wanted to keep him round the house nights."
"Then be careful he doesn't get out to-night--supposing you chain him up
just for once."
"Oh, I couldn't do that; Mrs. Googe wouldn't let me; but I'll see he
doesn't follow you. I do wish you would come in--it's so lonesome," she
said again wistfully.
"I can't now, Ellen; but if I can get away after eight, I may run over
and sit with you a while. I'm staying with Mrs. Caukins because the
Colonel is away to-night."
"So I heard; 'Lias told me just now on his way down to the village. He
said he wouldn't be gone long, for the Colonel wasn't to home.--I
wonder what they've turned on all the lights for?" she said, craning her
neck to look farther up the road.
Aileen made no reply. She cautioned her again to keep Rag at home. A
series of muffled but agonized yelps followed her down the walk.
She stood still in the road and looked about her. Everywhere the great
quarry arc-lights were sending their searching rays out upon the
quarries and their approaches.
"What shall I do--oh, what _shall_ I do!" was her hopeless unuttered
cry.
It seemed to Aileen Armagh, standing there in the road at the entrance
to the bridge, as if a powerful X-ray were being directed at that moment
upon her whole life so far as she remembered it; and not only upon that,
but upon her heart and soul--her thoughts, desires, her secret agony; as
if the ray, in penetrating her body and soul, were laying bare her
secret to the night:--she still loved him.
"Oh, what shall I do--what _shall_ I do!" was the continual inner cry.
Life was showing itself to her in this experience, as seen through the
lens of a quickened imagination, in all its hideousness. Never had she
experienced such a sense of loneliness. Never had she realized so
forcibly that she was without father and mother, without kin in a
foreign country, without a true home and abiding-place. Never had it
been brought home to her with such keen pain that she was, in truth, a
waif in this great world; that the one solid support for her in this
world, her affections, had been ruthlessly cut away from under her by
the hand of the man she had loved with all the freshness and joy of her
young loving heart. He had been all the more to her because she was
alone; the day dreams all the brighter because she believed he was the
one to realize them for her--and now!
She walked on slowly.
"What shall I do--what shall I do!" was her inward cry, repeated at
intervals. She crossed the bridge. All was chaotic in her thoughts. She
had supposed, during the last two months, that all her love was turned
to hate,--she hoped it was, for it would help her to bear,--that all her
feeling for him, whom she knew she ought to despise, was dead. Why,
then, if it were dead, she asked herself now, had she spoken so
vehemently to Luigi? And Luigi--where was he--what was he doing?
What was it produced that nervous shock when she learned the last truth
from Dulcie Caukins? Was it her shame at his dishonor? No--she knew by
the light of the X-ray piercing her soul that the thought of his
imprisonment meant absence from her; after all that had occurred, she
was obliged to confess that she was still longing for his presence. She
hated herself for this confession.--Where was he now?
She looked up the road towards the quarry woods--Thank God, those, at
least, were dark! Oh, if she but dared to go! dared to penetrate them;
to call to him that the hours of his freedom were numbered; to
help--someway, somehow! A sudden thought, over-powering in its intimation
of possibilities, stopped her short in the road just a little way beyond
the Colonel's; but before she could formulate it sufficiently to follow
it up with action, before she had time to realize the sensation of
returning courage, she was aware of the sound of running feet on the
road above her. On a slight rise of ground the figure of a man showed
for a moment against the clear early dark of the October night; he was
running at full speed.
Could it be--?
She braced herself to the shock--he was rapidly nearing her--a powerful
ray from an arc-light shot across his path--fell full upon his hatless
head--
"_You!_--Luigi!" she cried and darted forward to meet him.
He thrust out his arm to brush her aside, never slackening his pace; but
she caught at it, and, clasping it with both hands, hung upon it her
full weight, letting him drag her on with him a few feet.
"Stop, Luigi Poggi!--Stop, I tell you, or I'll scream for help--stop, I
say!"
He was obliged to slacken his speed in order not to hurt her. He tried
to shake her off, untwist her hands; she clung to him like a leech. Then
he stopped short, panting. She could see the sweat dropping from his
forehead; his teeth began to chatter. She still held his arm tightly
with both hands.
"Let me go--" he said, catching his breath spasmodically.
"Not till you tell me where you've been--what you've been doing--tell
me."
"Doing--" He brought out the word with difficulty.
"Yes, doing, don't you hear?" She shook his arm violently in her anxious
terror.
"I don't know--" the words were a long groan.
"Where have you been then?--quick, tell me--"
He began to shake with a hard nervous chill.
"With him--over in the quarry woods--I tried to take him--he fought
me--" The chill shook him till he could scarcely stand.
She dropped his arm; drew away from him as if touching were
contamination; then her eyes, dilating with a still greater horror,
fixed themselves on the bosom of his shirt--there was a stain--
"Have you killed him--" she whispered hoarsely.
The answer came through the clattering teeth:
"I--I don't know--you said--you said you--never wanted to see him
again--"
Luigi found himself speaking the last words to the empty air; he was
alone, in the middle of the road, in the full glare of an electric
light. He was conscious of a desire to escape from it, to escape
detection--to rid himself of his over-powering misery in the quietest way
possible. He gathered himself together; his limbs steadied; the
shivering grew less; he went on down the road at a quick walk. Already
the quarrymen were coming out in force to see what might be up. He must
avoid them at all hazards.
* * * * *
One thought was the motive power which sent Aileen running up the road
towards the pastures, by crossing which she could reach in a few minutes
the quarry woods: "I must know if he is dead; if he is not dead, I must
try to save him from a living death."
This thought alone sent her speeding over the darkened slopes. She was
light of foot, but sometimes she stumbled; she was up and on again--the
sheepfold her goal. The quarry woods stood out dark against the clear
sky; there seemed to be more light on these uplands than below in The
Gore; she saw the sheepfold like a square blot on the pasture slope. She
reached it--should she call aloud--call his name? How find him?
She listened intently; the wind had died down; the sheep were huddling
and moving restlessly within the fold; this movement seemed unusual.
She climbed the rough stone wall; the sheep were massed in one corner,
heads to the wall, tails to the bare centre of the fold; they kept
crowding closer and more close.
In that bared space of hoof-trampled earth she saw him lying.
She leaped down, the frightened sheep riding one another in their
frantic efforts to get away from the invaders of their peace. She knelt
by him; lifted his head on her knee; her hands touched his sleeve, she
drew back from something warm and wet.
"Champney--O Champney, what has he done to you!" she moaned in hopeless
terror; "what shall I do--"
"Is it you--Aileen?--help me up--"
With her aid he raised himself to a sitting posture.
"It must have been the loss of blood--I felt faint suddenly." He spoke
clearly. "Can you help me?"
"Yes, oh, yes--only tell me how."
"If you could bind this up--have you anything--"
"Yes, oh, yes--"
He used his left hand entirely; it was the right arm that had received
the full blow of some sharp instrument. "Just tear away the
shirt--that's right--"
She did as he bade her. She took her handkerchief and bound the arm
tightly above the wound, twisting it with one of her shell hairpins. She
slipped off her white petticoat, stripped it, and under his directions
bandaged the arm firmly.
He spoke to her then as if she were a personality and not an instrument.
"Aileen, it's all up with me if I am found here--if I don't get out of
this--tell my mother I was trying to see her--to get some funds, I have
nothing. I depended on my knowledge of this country to escape--put them
off the track--they're after me now--aren't they?"
"Yes--"
"I thought so; I should have got across to the house if the quarry
lights hadn't been turned on so suddenly--I knew they'd got word when I
saw that--still, I might have made the run, but that man throttled me--I
must go--"
He got on his feet. At that moment they both started violently at the
sound of something worrying at the gate; there was a rattle at the bars,
a scramble, a frightened bleating among the sheep, a joyous bark--and
Rag flung himself first upon Aileen then on Champney.
He caught the dog by the throat, choking him into silence, and handed
him to Aileen.
"For God's sake, keep the dog away--don't let him come--keep him quiet,
or I'm lost--" he dropped over the wall and disappeared in the woods.
Here and there across the pastures a lantern shot its unsteady rays. The
posse had begun their night's work.
The dog struggled frantically to free himself from Aileen's arms; again
and again she choked him that he might not bark and betray his master.
The terrified sheep bleated loud and long, trampling one another in vain
efforts to get through or over the wall.
"Oh, Rag, Rag,--stop, or I must kill you, dear, dear little Rag--oh, I
can't choke you--I can't--I can't! Rag, be still, I say--oh--"
Between his desire to free his limbs, to breathe freely, and the
instinctive longing to follow his master, the dog's powerful muscles
were doing double work.
"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do--" she groaned in her
helplessness. The dog's frantic struggles were proving too much for her
strength, for she had to hold him with one hand; the other was on his
windpipe. She knew 'Lias would soon be coming home; he could hear the
sheep from the road, as she already heard the subdued bay of the hound
and the muffled bark of the collie, shut--thanks to Mrs. Caukins'
premonition of what might happen--within four walls. She looked about
her--a strip of her white skirt lay on the ground--_Could she--?_
"No, Rag darling--no, I can't, I can't--" she began to cry. Through her
tears she saw something sticking up from the hoof-trampled earth near
the strip of cotton--a knife--
She was obliged to take her hand from the dog's throat in order to pick
it up--there was one joyous bark....
"O Rag, forgive me--forgive!" she cried under her breath, sobbing as if
her heart would break.
* * * * *
She picked up the piece of skirt, and fled with the knife in her
hand--over the wall, over the pastures, that seemed lighter beneath the
rising stars, down the highroad into the glare of an arc-light. She
looked at the instrument of death as she ran; it was a banana knife such
as Luigi used continually in his shop. She crossed the bridge, dropped
the knife over the guard into the rushing Rothel; re-crossed the bridge
and, throwing back the wings of the Scotch plaid cape she wore, examined
in the full light of the powerful terminal lamp her hands, dress, waist,
cuffs.--There was evidence.
She took off her cape, wrapped it over head and shoulders, folded it
close over both arms, and went back to the house. She heard carriages
coming up the road to The Gore.
Mrs. Caukins, in a quivering state of excitement, called to her from the
back porch:
"Come out here, Aileen; 'Lias hasn't got back yet--the sheep are making
the most awful noise; something's the matter over there, you may
depend--and I can see lights, can you?"
"Yes," she answered unsteadily. "I saw them a few minutes ago. I didn't
stay with Ellen, but went up the road a piece, for my head was aching
too, and I thought a little air would do me good--and I believe I got
frightened seeing the lights--I heard the sheep too--it's dreadful to
think what it means."
Mrs. Caukins turned and looked at her sharply; the light from the
kitchen shone out on the porch.
"Well, I must say you look as if you'd seen a ghost; you're all of a
shiver; you'd better go in and warm you and take a hot water bag up to
bed with you; it's going to be a frosty night. I'm going to stay here
till 'Lias comes back. I'm thankful the twins are abed and asleep, or I
should have three of you on my hands. Just as soon as 'Lias gets back,
I'm going into my room to lie down--I can't sleep, but if I stay up on
my feet another hour I shall collapse with my nerves and my head; you
can do what you've a mind to."
Aileen went into the kitchen. When Mrs. Caukins came in, fifteen minutes
later, with the information that she could see by the motion of 'Lias'
lantern that he was near the house, she found the girl huddled by the
stove; she was still wrapped in her cape. A few minutes afterwards she
went up to her room for the night.
Late in the evening there was a rumor about town that Champney Googe had
been murdered in the Colonel's sheepfold. Before midnight this was
contradicted, and the fact established that 'Lias had found his dog
stabbed to death in the fold, and that he said he had seen traces of a
terrific struggle. The last news, that came in over the telephone from
the quarries, was to the effect that no trace of the fugitive was found
in the quarry woods and the posse were now on the county line scouring
the hills to the north. The New York detectives, arriving on the evening
train, were carried up to join the Flamsted force.
The next day the officers of the law returned, and confirmed the report,
already current in the town, that Champney Googe had outwitted them and
made his escape. Every one believed he would attempt to cross the Canada
border, and the central detective agency laid its lines accordingly.