THE SIGNAL
Night came down sweetly over the mountain that quiet day. It wrapped the
village in soft gray folds; the stars came out hazily and shone with a
misty golden light; the wind merely whispered in the pines and the
hemlocks, and the sound of the falling water was lonely and sad in the
ears of Azalea.
Yet she had to be out in the night because—well, that’s a secret. At
least it was a secret from Jim. Because he would have laughed. She was
to signal the other two girls. It had been agreed upon.
“You see, I nearly die, Sundays,” Annie Laurie had said. “Our
house—really I can’t describe our house on Sunday. I feel as if my heart
were turning into old red sandstone.”
To have the strong-beating heart of Annie Laurie turn into structural
rock was something the friends could not permit. Anyway it would be an
excellent thing for Azalea in the mountain to know that her friends in
the valley were doing well. She could tell if they were doing well, if
the lantern was waved sideways; if anything was wrong it was to be swung
up and down.
“But I reckon you-all had better not swing it up and down,” she had said,
“for though I’ll know by that that something is wrong, of course I won’t
know what it is. And the waiting to find out would be dreadful.”
“It will have to be a pretty dreadful ‘something’ to make us give the bad
signal, won’t it, Annie Laurie?” Carin had remarked.
So it was with a light heart and a mysterious manner that Azalea, who was
supposed to leave the kitchen-living room to go to her own little loft,
stole out the back way, took the lantern from its nail, lighted it, and
crept to the outlook. She had five minutes to wait before the time
appointed, and these moments proved to be a “perfect caution” for
slowness. She counted the seconds to make sure—and yet was not sure, for
she managed to get in about two counts and a half to each second.
However, at last she felt justified in bringing out her light from behind
the tree bole where she had hidden it, and waving it back and forth in
enthusiastic announcement that all was right. She couldn’t help thinking
with a throb of the heart how very, very right it all was! How sweet the
day had been; how filled with comfort for body and soul; how beautiful to
be loved as she was loved in that little home! Of course she might have
repined that she had not been made Carin’s adopted sister and surrounded
with all manner of luxuries, but the love she felt for Mrs. McBirney was
too deep, too sincere, to permit such a thought to have a place in her
heart for very long.
Yes, her home was a log cabin, and her family simple mountain people.
But she could not feel cheated. The taste of the Things That Were was
sweet on her palate, and her hope for the future bubbled in her heart as
the spring, whose whispering she could hear, bubbled from the ground.
So back and forth in the gray air went her lantern, saying:
“All is well! All is well!”
Azalea actually laughed aloud to think of Carin, all in her Sunday best,
stealing out of that stately drawing-room and creeping up the stairs to
the huge cupola and standing there on the roof in the wind and night,
waving her lantern. What fun it was to know a girl like that—a girl who
wasn’t afraid to do things, if she was rich and beautiful. There was
some “go” in Carin, no doubt about it, though she did look so delicate
and alabasterish. Azalea loved to invent words, and she invented
“alabasterish” on the moment.
[Picture: Back and forth went her lantern, saying: “All is well! All is
well!”]
But what did that mean? Annie Laurie’s lantern, full and strong and like
a star, had shone through the light mist and was being waved frantically
up and down. Mercy! how it waved.
“All is wrong! All is wrong!” it protested.
What could that mean? Carin, of course, would know in a few minutes.
She would telephone. But Azalea had no telephone and she would not be
allowed to ride to the valley at night.
“All is wrong—oh, very, very, wrong!” the lantern kept on saying.
What could she do to let Annie Laurie know that she understood? Poor
Annie Laurie, who was brave about everything! It was a real trouble,
Azalea felt sure. Had one of the aunts fallen and broken a bone? Could
Mr. Pace be ill? Were the cattle poisoned? Azalea took her lantern and
twisted it around and around until it must have looked to Annie Laurie
like a snare of fireflies. Then Carin, understanding, did the same
thing. After that it was dark on Carin’s roof; then Annie Laurie’s
lantern disappeared too. They had gone to the telephone, Azalea
inferred.
She stamped back through the dew, hot with impatience. “I shan’t sleep a
wink to-night,” she declared.
She undressed in anguish of soul, sank on her knees and sent up a fervent
prayer for her friend, and then throwing herself on what she expected and
desired to be a sleepless bed, fell fast asleep.
Yet in her sleep she had many dreams, and in each of them Annie Laurie
appeared, always in some horrid plight. Now wolves were chasing her; now
she had fallen over the cataract; now the horses were running away with
her; now she was speeding down the road again, away from the scorn of her
schoolmates, and little drops of blood were falling on the road from her
shattered heart.
But none of these things were anywhere near the truth, though nothing
could be more terrible to Annie Laurie than what actually had happened.
It had come about after church. Dinner was over; the house had been
tidied, and the two aunts and Mr. Pace and Annie Laurie sat in the
sitting room before a fine fire. The aunts had taken out their pious
books and were reading them. Mr. Pace was engaged in plodding sleepily
through somebody’s account of the “Thirty Year’s War.” As for Annie, she
was supposed to be writing to a friend, but as a matter of fact she was
scribbling some verses which she meant to show to the girls the next day.
Nibbling the end of one’s pen is more or less of a necessity when one is
writing verses, and Annie Laurie, having got as far as that—and not much
farther—was sampling the fine inky flavor of hers, and so chanced to look
up and to let her glance fall on her father.
At first she was only conscious that his expression was not quite
familiar to her. Then—well, then suddenly and terribly, she saw that he
was indeed changed—that something frightful had happened to him. She
sprang toward him, calling his name.
“Father—father!”
But no answer came.
The aunts came running, terror in their faces.
“Paralysis,” said Miss Adnah. “Zillah, call the doctor. Azalea, help me
lay him down—yes, on the floor. Open the window. Go get his bed ready,
Zillah, after you’ve got the doctor. We and the doctor between us must
get him in bed.”
Annie Laurie did all she was told. She couldn’t realize what had
happened. Something seemed to be whirling around and around in her
brain, and all it said was:
“Isn’t Aunt Adnah wonderful? Isn’t Aunt Adnah wonderful?”
She was indeed a general in times of trouble. Why, once when she was
young—but there isn’t time to tell Aunt Adnah’s story now.
There was time for nothing, it seemed. It had come like a
lightning-flash. Even the doctor was unable to aid. Simeon Pace lay in
his bed, looking at them with tortured eyes. It seemed to Annie Laurie
that he was trying to make her understand something—with all his
vanishing power he was trying to give her some important piece of
information. She put her ear to his lips; she listened with the very
ears of her soul; but the thing he wished her to know went into silence
with him. A dread convulsion brought the end.
Annie Laurie, standing aghast, knew she was fatherless as well as
motherless. Yet it couldn’t be! Why, only a little while before
everything had been well. Had been well! That reminded her of the
signal they were to send—the signal that was to remind each member of the
Girl’s Triple Alliance that they had not forgotten each other. And they
had agreed not to send the “bad” message unless something very terrible
happened. They had laughed about it! And now the terrible thing really
had happened. Or had it? Was it, perhaps, only a frightful dream? But
no, it was true—and her heart ached so! If only the girls knew! Well,
she would tell them. She sat near the clock, watching it. Perhaps when
she let the girls know, her throat wouldn’t ache so with that new,
strange, crushing pain. Perhaps her eyeballs would cease burning. How
busy it seemed around the house! People were coming and going. They
stopped to speak to her, and she found herself saying mechanically:
“Yes, I know. You are very kind. To-morrow I’ll understand better.
Thank you—to-morrow.”
Out of sheer compassion they left her alone.
Seven o’clock. It was time for the signal. She found the lantern and
made her way, unseen, to the roof. Azalea’s light shone at her from the
gray air, far, far up the ridge. Carin’s light flashed from the roof of
the mansion. All was well with them. They were laughing—Annie Laurie
knew they were laughing. And she—she waved her lantern up and down and
up and down with a kind of passion. She must make them know how deep was
the sorrow that had befallen her. And they seemed to know. It was as if
she could feel the streams of their sympathy rolling toward her. Yes,
they understood. That queer fluttering of their lanterns assured her of
it. Annie Laurie left her roof and descending into the attic, sank on an
old settle there. She dragged a horse blanket over her and at last the
storm of her anguish broke, and she wept and wept.