A whisper, that became a rumour, which became a report, reached Gage and
found the ears of Augustus Carline, whose wife had disappeared sometime
previously. After two wild days of drinking Carline suddenly sobered up
when the fact became assured that Nelia had gone and really meant to
remain away, perhaps forever.
The thing that startled him into certainty was the paper which he found
signed by himself, at the bank. He had forgotten all about signing the
papers that night when Nelia had shown herself to be the gayest sport of
them all. Now he found that he had signed away his stocks and bonds, and
that he had given over his cash account.
The amount was startling enough, but it did not include his real estate,
of which about two thirds of his fortune had been composed. If it had
been all stocks and bonds, he thought he would have been left with
nothing. He considered himself at once fortunate and unlucky.
"I never knew the old girl was as lively as that!" he told himself, and
having tasted a feast, he could not regard the Widow Plosell as more
than a lunch, and a light lunch, at that.
Nelia had been easily traced to Chester. Beyond Chester the trail seemed
to indicate that Dick Asunder had eloped with her, but ten days later
Asunder returned home with a bride whom he had married in St. Louis.
Beyond Chester Nelia had left no trace, and there was nothing even to
indicate whether she had taken the river steamer, the railroad train, or
gone into flight with someone who was unknown and unsuspected. When
Carline, sobered and regretful, began to make searching inquiries, he
learned that there were a score, or half a hundred men for whom Old
Crele had acted as a hunter's and fisher's guide. These sportsmen had
come from far and wide during many years, and both Crele and her wistful
mother admitted that many of them had shown signs of interest and even
indications of affection for the girl as a child and as a pretty maid,
daughter of a poor old ne'er-do-well.
"But she was good," Carline cried. "Didn't she tell you she was
going--or where she'd go?"
"Never a word!" the two denied.
"But where would she go?" the frantic husband demanded. "Did she never
talk about going anywhere?"
"Well-l," Old Crele meditated, "peahs like she used to go down an' watch
Ole Mississip' a heap. What'd she use to say, Old Woman? I disremember,
I 'clar I do."
"Why, she was always wishing she knowed where all that river come from
an' where all it'd be goin' to," Mrs. Crele at last recollected.
"But she wouldn't dare--She wouldn't go alone?" Carline choked.
"Prob'ly not, a gal favoured like her," Old Crele admitted, without
shame. "I 'low if she was a-picking, she'd 'a' had the pick."
Cold rage alternated with hot fear in the mind of Gus Carline. If she
had gone alone, he might yet overtake her; on the other hand, if she had
gone with some man, he was in honour bound to kill that man. He was
sensitive, now, on points of honour. The Widow Plosell, having succeeded
in creating a favourable condition, from her viewpoint, sought to take
advantage of it. She was, however, obliged to go seeking her recent
admirer, only to discover that he blamed her--as men do--for his
trouble. She consulted a lawyer to see if she could not obtain financial
redress for her unhappy position, only to learn of her own financial
danger should Mrs. Carline determine upon legal revenge.
Carline, between trying to convince himself that he was the victim of
fate and the innocent sufferer from a domestic tragedy brought upon
himself by events over which he had no control, fell to hating liquor as
the chief cause of his discomfiture.
Then a whisper that became a rumour, which at last seemed to be a fact,
said that Nelia Carline was somewhere down Old Mississip'. Someone who
knew her by sight was reported to have seen her in Cape Girardeau, and
the husband raced down there in his automobile to see if he could not
learn something about the missing woman, whose absence now proved what a
place she had filled in his heart.
There was no doubt of it. Nelia had been there, but no one had happened
to think to tell Carline about it. She had landed in a pretty
shanty-boat, the wharf-master said, and had pulled out just before a
river man in a brick-red cabin-boat of small size had left the eddy. The
river man had dropped in just behind her, and, according to the
wharf-master:
"I shore kept my eyes on that man, for he was a riveh rat!"
The thought was sickening to Carline. His wife floating down the river
with a river rat close behind presented but two explanations: she was
being followed for crime, or the two were just flirting on the river,
together.
He bought a pretty 28-foot motorboat, 22-inch draft with a 7-foot beam
and a raised deck cabin. Having stocked up with supplies, he started
down the Ohio to find his woman.
He could not tell what his intention was, not even to himself; his mind,
long weakened and depraved by liquor, lacked clarity of thought and
distinctiveness of purpose. One hour he raged with anger, and murder
blackened his heart; another minute, his shattered nerves left him in a
panic of fears and remorse, and he hoped for nothing better than to beg
his wife and sweetheart for forgiveness. At all times dread of what he
might find at the end of the trail tormented him from terror to
despair.
His anguish overcame all his other sensations. It even overcame his lust
for liquor. He grew sturdier under his affliction, so that when he
arrived at Cairo, and swung his craft smartly up to the wharf-boat, his
eyes were clear and his skin was honestly coloured by sunshine and pure
winds. Here fortune favoured him with more news of his wife. The
engineer of the Cairo-Missouri ferryboat had seen a young and pretty
woman moored at the bank some distance from the landing. She had
remained there upward of a week, having no visitors, and making daily
visits over the levee into the little city.
"One day she stood there, I bet half an hour, looking back, like she was
waiting," the engineer said. "I seen her onto the levee top. Then she
come down, jumped aboard with her lines, an' pulled out to go on
trippin' down. I wondered then wouldn't some man be following of her."
When Carline passed below the sandbar point, at which the Ohio and
Mississippi mingle their waters, and the human flotsam from ten thousand
towns is caught by swirling eddies, he found himself subdued by a shadow
that fell athwart his course, dulling the fire of his own spirit with a
doubt and an awe which he had never before known.
His wife had gone past the Jumping Off Place; he had heard a thousand
jests about that fork of the rivers, without comprehending its deeper
meaning, till in his own experience he, too, was flung down the tide by
forces now beyond his control, though he himself had set them in motion.
His suffering was no less acute, his mind was no less active, but it
dawned slowly on him that, after all, the acute pain which was in his
heart was no greater than the sorrow, the suffering, the poisoned
deliriums of the thousands who had given themselves to this mighty
flood, which was so vast and powerful that it dwarfed the senses of
mortals to a feeling of the proper proportion of their affairs in the
workings of the universe.
Insensibly, but surely, his pride began to fade and his selfishness
began to give way to better understanding and kindlier counsels. That
much the River Spirit had done for him. He would not give up the search,
but rather would he increase its thoroughness, and redouble his efforts.
But he would never again be quite without sympathy, quite without
understanding of sensations and experiences which were not of his own
heart and soul.
The river was a mile wide; its current surged from the deeps; it
flowed down the bend and along the reach with a noiselessness, a
resistlessness, a magnitude that seemed to carry him out of his whole
previous existence--and so it did carry him. Still human, still finite,
prone to error and lack of comprehension, nevertheless Augustus
Carline entered for the moment upon a new life recklessly and
willingly.