PHOEBE.
Fate had chosen a very simple way of bringing about events of great
importance to persons in this history. A doctor off on a walking trip
had idly lifted his telescope to scan the village in the valley. As he
swept his glass over the country, it had brought near to him glimpses of
white farmhouses, men working in the fields and then looming quite close
and unexpectedly large to his eye, a woman brandishing a long knife over
the head of a person in white.
The doctor lost no time in idle speculation.
"It's in that camp on the lower ledge," he said to himself as he dashed
down the path, and in some twenty minutes or more entered the living
room of Sunrise Camp.
It is not pleasant to think of what might have happened to Miss Helen
Campbell if the doctor's alert, intelligent eyes had not caught and
instantly comprehended the significance of the picture brought to him by
the telescope. How long might she have lain there unconscious, or how
dealt with the half-intoxicated Lupo if he had mounted the steps in
search of his wife? Then, as the hours slipped on and no human soul came
near to minister to her and comfort her, and she had finally realized
that her young people had never returned, how would she have endured
that second shock?
Fate had brought the doctor in the nick of time to perform an
inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew and
loved Miss Helen Campbell.
And through this service to the friends of Miss Campbell, another was to
follow,--one filled with danger and interest, which would require all
the skill of his profession.
About ten o'clock Miss Campbell awoke, refreshed and rested. She took
the milk and bread with an appetite. Then she examined the stranger at
her bedside with some curiosity.
"I suppose they sent for you from the village?" she asked.
"I happened to be nearer than that," he answered.
Memory was returning by slow degrees.
"I had a shock of some sort; or was it a fall? I remember fainting and
the next thing I recall was aromatic ammonia and you." The doctor
smiled. "I suppose they are all in bed now. They were too tired to sit
up."
"It was so late, you see," he said apologetically.
"They needn't have left me this enormous porch to myself. I know they
will hate sleeping down there. Can't Billie come and speak to me?"
"I am afraid he's sound asleep by now."
"He?" ejaculated the patient. "But, of course, how could you be expected
to know my young cousin by name. She is the tall girl with the gray
eyes. I think she is beautiful. Perhaps you might not--but you would--"
The doctor started. He had heard a stealthy step on the porch below.
"You will not think me impertinent if I ask you not to talk?" he said.
"Just a few more hours' quiet and you'll be quite fit. I'm going to
leave you a moment."
Miss Campbell gave him a good natured smile. She liked his fine face and
his clear brown eyes.
"Very well, doctor," she said. "I see you know your business. I'll be
obedient."
Taking the lamp he went downstairs.
It could hardly be the gray-eyed Billie and her friends returning, he
argued. They would never come creeping back in that stealthy manner.
"Well, who is it?" he called in a low voice.
Mrs. Lupo came out of the shadows and stood before him.
"Lady going die?" she asked in a terrified whisper.
"Pretty ill, but she's coming around."
The woman looked vastly relieved.
"Young lady know?"
"She has never come back."
Mrs. Lupo raised both hands in a gesture of despair.
"The marsh--I never told--I'm wicked woman!" she exclaimed.
"Good heavens!" said the doctor, "you mean to say you sent them through
that bog? It's full of suck holes. You have done enough wickedness for
one day. Where is your husband? Hurry up, quick. Wake up the villagers.
Get lanterns. Go find them!"
Mrs. Lupo seized a lantern from the gallery.
"I go myself," she said, and disappeared. All that night Mrs. Lupo
searched Table Top. She knew the trail as intimately as the mountain
girl, but at dawn she had found nothing. But as the light spread over
the marsh, she saw something lying on the very edge of the most
dangerous quicksand in the place. It was Nancy's hobble skirt.
"Oh, oh!" groaned the poor woman over and over with a kind of savage
chant. "Oh, oh! I'm punished now."
Rolling the skirt into a bundle she turned her face from Sunrise Camp
and disappeared in the pine forests.
About an hour after Mrs. Lupo had left the camp, the doctor heard the
noise of hurrying footsteps on the gallery at the front and hastening
downstairs he found Ben Austen and his guide.
"Miss Campbell--how has she stood it? Is she all right?" demanded Ben
breathlessly.
"Not so loud," answered the doctor. Then he told Ben in a few words what
had happened. "She doesn't even know you have been lost," he said.
While the two men were talking together in whispers, the girl looked
about her with much curiosity. Was she in a palace? The high roof, the
rugs and chairs were things new to her. And this was called a "camp"!
What was the inside of a real house like, she wondered.
"That virago!" she heard Ben say. "No wonder she drives Lupo to drink.
This young lady here has saved us all and guided me back through the
swamp." He indicated the barefooted girl. "I suppose we would have been
there yet if she hadn't heard us call."
"You must sit down," said the doctor kindly. "I'll just have a look at
my patient and then help this young man get some supper. Your name
is--?"
"Phoebe," she answered, shrinking with shyness.
"Phoebe what?"
"I have no other name."
Phoebe had been accustomed all her life to the courtesy and gentleness
of one man, her father. The few others she had known were rough
mountaineers, and here was she, barefooted and ragged, treated like a
princess by two men.
While the doctor fried ham and eggs, the staple of every camp, Ben made
a pot of tea, and presently drew up a table in front of her and placed
on it a tray set as neatly as he knew how. Phoebe watched the
proceedings with wide frightened eyes. She tried to hide her bare feet
under her ragged dress and to draw down the sleeves over her hands,
brown and stained with blackberry juice. Later, when they had made her a
bed on one of the divans and left her to sleep until daylight, she was
too bewildered to say good-night.
All her life Phoebe had lived in the little mountain cabin. She had
never known a mother and she had never had a friend. Her father had
taught her many things, however, and one was to read from the books on
the shelf. There were several books on astronomy; Pilgrim's Progress;
the Bible; a volume of Shakespeare; a history of England; a translation
of the "Iliad", and some volumes of poetry:--Keats, Tennyson and
Browning. Where her father had got these books and the silver and the
blue china, she knew no more than he. He had tried and tried to
remember, but he had forgotten. He had no identity, no past. His name,
his family, everything connected with his early life had gone. His past
life had stopped when he had gone for a physician. He had taught his
little girl to read, as we have said, and when old enough she had often
read aloud in the long winter evenings. He had seemed to listen with
absorbed interest, but it is difficult to say how much he grasped of the
words he heard, or whether they were mere words to him with no
collective significance.
With a certain instinct left to him from that mysterious dead past, he
had imparted to his daughter an unmistakable refinement of speech and
manner. About some things he was even fastidious,--her way of eating,
the appearance of the table and the silver. He himself was excessively
neat and orderly and had periods of great industry, weaving baskets of
sweet grass and carving wood, not crudely, but with unusual taste, boxes
and chalets, napkin rings and figures of animals. Where he had learned
these arts his daughter never knew, but she imagined from an old Indian
who had lived in the little cabin in the early days and had died when
Phoebe was still quite small. As far as a man may be sane whose memory
extends back only some eighteen years and who has only one illusion,
Phoebe's father was sane. The baskets and woodcarving he and his
daughter peddled through the country with success, because they were
exceedingly well done, and the money earned was sufficient for their
small needs.
Too excited from the unusual events of the night to sleep, Phoebe lay on
the divan in the living room and reviewed the mysteries that filled her
life. She had a strange smattering of knowledge for a girl of eighteen.
It would seem that she had been gifted with a memory for two since her
father had none, and whatever she learned from the row of books on the
shelves she remembered. That is, whatever interested her.
She knew the constellations and the planets, and on summer nights had
located them in the heavens by means of the book chart. She would point
them out to her father, who glanced at them vaguely, smiled and went on
playing the zither, his consolation in idle moments.
She had read and re-read the history of England so many times that some
of the chapters she could repeat word for word. She understood little of
the poetry, but the rhythm of the lines sang in her head, and without
knowing the meaning she could repeat in a sing-song voice long poems and
sonnets. "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Iliad" and the New Testament with
the Psalms were her solace on the long winter evenings. One after the
other she read them with unending pleasure. She would read slowly so as
not to finish too soon, as a child nibbles at her sweet cake to make it
last the longer, and having finished one volume she would take up
another with all the eagerness of one about to plunge into a new book.
Just how much she had gained from the teachings of Christ was hidden
deep in her own soul, but we will find later that Phoebe had learned a
secret which those who have had the advantage of broad education have
often passed by.
When at last the first pipings of the birds came to herald the dawn, she
rose and went out to the gallery. The last star was fading into the
grayness of the sky and already morning was at hand. In the growing
light it might be seen that Phoebe had an unusually beautiful face. Her
eyes, of very dark blue, were almost black at times; her reddish brown
hair, coiled into a thick knot on her neck, grew low on her forehead.
Her features were well molded, her mouth fine and strong, and a full,
rounded chin added sweetness to her expression.
Standing in the very spot where she had first seen Billie and Mary, she
turned her face toward the east and watched for the sun.
"I believe my prayers are answered," she said.
Some twenty minutes later, seated by Ben in the motor car, she guided
him along a mountain road, which led at last to a point near her
father's cabin.