the cold and the snow and the roaring wind; homeless because she had
driven him forth with her coldness; friendless because she had not
given him the precious friendship of a mother. Her own son, fearing
his mother so much that he was hiding away from her among these
terrible, mourning, roaring forests! Behind her veil, her delicately
powdered cheeks showed moist lines where the tears of hungry
motherhood slid swiftly down from eyes as brown as Jack's and as
direct in their gaze, but blurred now and filled with a terrible
yearning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GRIEF, AND HOPE THAT DIED HARD
During the months when she had hidden her shame in a sanitarium, Mrs.
Singleton Corey first learned how it felt to be unsatisfied with
herself. Had learned, too, what it meant to have her life emptied of
Jack's roisterous personality. She had learned to doubt the
infallibility of her own judgments, the justice of her own viewpoints.
She had attained a clarity of vision that enabled her to see herself a
failure where she had taken it for granted that she was a success. She
had failed as a mother. She had not taught her son to trust her, to
love her--and she had discovered how much she craved his love and his
trust.
Now she was learning other things. For the first time in her sheltered
life Mrs. Singleton Corey knew what it meant to be cold; bitterly
cold--cold to the middle of her bones. As Murphy had predicted, a tree
had fallen across the trail, so close to their passing that they had
heard the crash of it and had come up to see the branches still
quivering from the impact. Before then Mrs. Singleton Corey had
learned the feel of biting cold, when she waited on a bald nose of the
hill while three shovels lifted the snow out of the road so that they
could go on. Her unaccustomed ears had learned the sound of
able-bodied swearing because the horseman had taken a short-cut over
the hill and so had not broken the trail here for the team.
Then, because the driver had not prepared for the emergency of fallen
trees--rather, because the labor of removing a section would have been
too long even if they had brought axes and a cross-cut saw--she
learned how it felt to be plodding through snow to her aristocratic
knees. She had to walk a mile and a half to reach Toll-Gate cabin,
which was the only shelter on the mountainside, save the cabin of
Murphy and Mike, which was out of the question. She had to walk, since
she declined to ride one of the horses bareback; so she was tired, for
the first time in her pampered life, and she knew that always before
then she had merely played at being tired.
The driver, being unable to go farther with the sleigh, and having a
merciful regard for his four horses, turned back when the men had
lifted the sleigh around so that it faced townward. So Mrs. Singleton
Corey had the novel experience of walking with the assistance of
Murphy, whose hands were eager to help the lady, whose tongue was
eager to while away the wearisome journey with friendly converse,
whose breath was odorous of bad whisky. The other two men went ahead
with the blankets and the gunny-sack of supplies, and broke trail for
Murphy and the lady whose mission remained altogether a mystery, whose
manner was altogether discouraging to curiosity.
Those of us who have never experienced hardships, never plumbed the
black depths of trouble, never suffered desperate anguish, are too
prone to belittle the suffering of others. Mrs. Singleton Corey had
always secretly believed that suffering meant merely a certain
bearable degree of discomfort. In exalted moments she had contemplated
simple living as a desirable thing, good to purge one's soul of
trivialities. Life in the raw was picturesque.
She changed her mind with a suddenness that was painful when she
tottered thankfully into Toll-Gate cabin and found the main room
unswept and with the breakfast dishes cold and cluttered upon the
rough, homemade table. And Kate crying on a couch in the other room,
close enough to the heating stove so that she could keep the fire up
without putting her injured foot to the floor. She did not know this
disheveled woman with swollen eyes and a soiled breakfast cap and an
ugly bathrobe and one foot bandaged like a caricature of a gouty
member of plutocracy. The Kate Humphrey she hazily remembered had been
a careful product of refinement, attired in a black lace evening gown
and wearing very good imitation pearls.
But Mrs. Singleton Corey gave no more than one glance at Kate, who
hurriedly pulled her bathrobe together and made a half-hearted attempt
to rise and greet her properly. The stove looked like a glimpse of
paradise, and Mrs. Singleton Corey pulled up a straight-backed chair
and sat down with a groan of thankfulness, pulling her snow-sodden
skirts up above her shoetops to let a little warmth reach her
patrician limbs. She fumbled at the buttons of her coat and threw it
open, laid a palm eloquently upon her aching side and groaned again.
But the dauntless Mrs. Singleton Corey could not for long permit her
spirit to be subdued, especially since she had not yet found Jack.
"Well, can you get word to my son that I am here and should like to
see him?" she asked, as soon as the chill had left her a little. "This
is a terrible storm," she added politely.
Even when Kate had explained how impossible it was to get word to any
one just then, Mrs. Singleton Corey refused to yield one bit of her
composure to the anxiety that filled her. She simply sat and looked at
poor Kate like the chairman of a ways-and-means committee who is
waiting to hear all the reports.
"You think, then, that the young woman went to meet Jack?"
"I know she did. She was furious because I had not concealed the fact
of his being here, but I felt that I owed it--"
"Yes, to be sure. And where would she be most likely to meet him? Do
you know?"
"I know where she did meet him," Kate retorted with an edge to her
voice. "She couldn't have gotten lost, though, if she had gone there.
It is close to the road you traveled. Doug--Professor Harrison has led
a party up where Marion said Jack had his cave. If they are there, we
shall know it as soon as they come back."
"Yes, certainly. And if they are not there?" Mrs. Singleton Corey held
her voice firm though the heart within her trembled at the terrible
possibility.
"Well--she didn't take the train, we know that positively. She _must_
be up there with Jack!"
Mrs. Singleton Corey knew very well that Kate was merely propping her
hope with the statement, but she was glad enough to accept the prop
for her own hopes. So they talked desultorily and with that
arms-length amiability which is the small currency of polite
conversation between two strange women, and Mrs. Singleton Corey laid
aside her dignity with her fur-lined coat, and made tea for
them--since Kate could not walk.
Late in the afternoon men began to straggle into the cabin, fagged and
with no news of Marion. The professor was brought back so exhausted
that he could not walk without assistance, and talked incoherently of
being shot at, up near the peak, and of being unable to reach Taylor
Rock on account of the furious wind and the deep drifts.
Hank Brown declared that he could make it in the morning, and one or
two others volunteered to go with him. It began to seem more and more
likely that Marion was up there and compelled by the storm to stay, in
whatever poor refuge Jack might have. It seemed useless to make any
further attempt at hiding Jack's identity and whereabouts, although
Mrs. Singleton Corey, with a warning glance at Kate and a few
carefully constructed sentences, managed to convey the impression that
Jack had been hiding away from her, after a quarrel between them which
had proved merely a misunderstanding. She was vastly relieved to see
that her explanation was accepted, and to know that if Quincy had ever
heard of the auto-bandit affair, it had forgotten all about it long
ago.
Still, that was a small relief, and temporary. Until the next day they
were hopeful, and the physical discomfort of staying in that crude
little cabin with a lot of ungrammatical, roughly clad men, and of
having no maid to serve her and not even the comfort of privacy,
loomed large in the mind of Mrs. Singleton Corey. Never before in her
life had she drunk coffee with condensed cream in it, or eaten burned
bread with stale butter, and boiled beans and bacon. Never before had
she shared the bed of another woman, or slept in a borrowed nightgown
that was too tight in the arms. To Mrs. Singleton Corey these things
bore all the earmarks of tragedy.
But the next day real tragedy pushed small discomforts back into their
proper perspective. It still stormed, though not so furiously, and
with fitful spells of sunlight breaking through the churning clouds.
The men left the cabin at daylight, and Mrs. Singleton Corey found
herself practically compelled to wash the dishes and sweep the floor
and wait on the distracted Kate who was crushed under the realization
of Mrs. Singleton Corey's disgust at her surroundings. Conversation
languished that day. Mrs. Singleton Corey sat in a straight-backed
chair and stared out of the window that faced the little basin, and
waited for Jack to come. She had suffered much, and she felt that fate
owed her a speedy return of the prodigal.
Instead of that they brought Hank Brown to the cabin, dead on a
makeshift stretcher. When the shock of that had passed a little, so
that her mind could digest details, Mrs. Singleton Corey learned, with
a terrible, vise-like contraction of the heart, that Hank had climbed
ahead of the others and had almost reached the place they called
Taylor Rock, where Jack was said to have his cave. Those below had
heard a rifle shot, and they had climbed up to find Hank stretched
dead in the snow. Two men had searched the vicinity as well as they
could, but they had found nothing at all. The snow, they said, was
drifted twenty feet deep in some places.
They did not tell her what they thought about it, but Mrs. Singleton
Corey knew. And Kate knew. And the two women's eyes would not meet,
after that, and their voices were constrained, their words formal when
they found it necessary to have speech with each other.
Mrs. Singleton Corey forgot the crudities and the discomforts of
Toll-Gate cabin after that. She watched the trail, and her eyes
questioned dumbly every man that came in for rest and food before
going out again to the search. They always went again, fighting their
way through the storm that never quite cleared. They went forth, with
a dogged persistence and a courage that made Mrs. Singleton Corey
marvel in spite of her absorption in her own anxiety.
Men with fresh horses and fresh supplies came up from the valley, and
the search went on, settling to a loose system of signals, relief
shifts and the laying out of certain districts for certain men to
cover, yard by yard. The body of Hank Brown was lashed upon a horse
and taken down to Quincy, and in the evening the mystery of his death
was discussed in the kitchen, where the men sat in a haze of tobacco
smoke. Mike had been reported absent from his cabin, the day that
Murphy came up from the valley, and he had not returned. So there was
mystery in plenty to keep the talk going. One man shot dead from
ambush and three persons missing, were enough to stir the most
phlegmatic soul--and Mrs. Singleton Corey, however self-possessed her
manner, was not phlegmatic.
Stormy day followed stormy day, and still they found no trace of
Marion, got no glimpse of Jack. There were days when the wind made it
physically impossible to climb the peak and search for the cave under
Taylor Rock, dangerous to be abroad in the woods. Hank had said that
he knew about where the cave was--but Hank's lips were closed forever
upon garrulous conversation. Two or three others were more or less
familiar with that barren crest, having hunted bear in that locality.
They led the parties that turned their faces toward the peak whenever
the wind and the snow promised to hold back for a time.
They began to whisper together, out in the kitchen where they thought
that Mrs. Singleton Corey could not hear. They whispered about the
fight that had taken place up at the lookout station, last summer,
when Hank had ridden into town sullen and with blackened eyes and
swollen lips, and had cursed the lookout on Mt. Hough. It began to
seem imperative that they locate that cave as soon as possible, and
the man who had shot Hank.
Kate mourned because Fred was not there, and talked as though his
presence would right nearly everything. That, and the whispering and
the meaning glances among the men when she appeared in the room,
exasperated Mrs. Singleton Corey almost beyond endurance. Why did they
not find Jack and the girl? What possible use could Fred be, more than
any other man? Why didn't somebody do something? She had never seen so
inefficient a country, it seemed to her. Why, they had even let the
trains stop running, and the telegraph lines were all down! Nobody
seemed to know when communication with the outside world would be
possible. She might have to stay here a month, for all she could learn
to the contrary. There was just one cheerful thought connected with
the whole thing, and that was the fact that this Fred, of whom Kate
talked so much, could not be summoned. Mrs. Singleton Corey felt that
another Humphrey in the house would drive her quite mad.
Then one day Murphy came stumbling in to the cabin, just after three
or four disheartened searchers had arrived, and announced that he had
got on the track of the man that shot Hank Brown.
"An' it's Mike, the crazy fool thot did it, an' I'll bet money on it,"
he declared, goggling around at his audience. "An' what's more, the
rest of ye had betther be travelin' wit' yer eyes open, fer he's crazy
as a loon, an' he'll kill anny one that crosses his trail. An' didn't
I notice just this marnin' that his rifle was gone wit' him--me dom
eyes bein' so near blind thot I c'uldn't see in the corner where it
was, an' only fer wantin' a belt that hung on a nail there, I w'uldn't
av been feelin' around at all where the gun sh'uld be standin'. An'
it's gone, an' I mind me now the talk he was makin' about sphies in
the woods, an' thot the gurrl had betther look out, an' the feller up
on the peak had betther look out, an' me thinkin' he was talkin'
becawse av the railroad tie thot hit 'im wanct, an' hushed 'im up whin
I sh'uld 'a' been takin' 'im in to the crazy house, I dunno. An' if
he's kilt the gurrl an' the missus' boy, like he kilt Hank Brown, it's
like he's found the cave the lad was livin' in, an' is sthayin' holed
up there, I dunno--fer he ain't been near the cabin, an' unlest a tree
er a fallin' limb kilt him, he'd have to be sthayin' somewheres. Fer
he's kilt the gurrl an' the boy, an' I'll bet money on it, I dunno."
"Looks that way, Murphy--" began one, but he was stopped by a cry that
thrilled them with the terrible grief that was in the voice,--grief
and hope that was dying hard.
Mrs. Singleton Corey, having stood just within the other room
listening, made two steps toward Murphy and fell fainting to the
kitchen floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TROUBLE FINDS THE GOLD THAT WAS IN THEM
After that nothing seemed to matter. The days slipped by and Mrs.
Singleton Corey cared so little that she did not count them or call
them by name. She would sit by the one window that faced the Basin and
watch the trail beaten in the deep snow by the passing of many feet,
and brood over the days when she might have won Jack and by the very
closeness of their love have saved him from this. Had she done her
part, Jack would not have lied to her about that trip to Venice; he
would not have dreamed of such a thing. It hurt terribly to think how
close she had been to happiness with Jack and how unthinkingly she had
let it slip from her while she centered her interest upon other things
that held no comfort for her now--now when all she asked of life was
to give her back her son alive.
Men came and went, and answered the heartbreaking question in her big
brown eyes with cheerful words that did not, somehow, cheer. The storm
was over, they told her, and now they would have a better chance. She
mustn't think of what Murphy said--Murphy was an old fool. She
mustn't give up. And even while they talked she knew by their eyes
that they had given up long ago, and only kept up the pretense of
hopeful searching for her sake.
Because the partition was only one thickness of boards she heard them
commenting one night on the grim fact that no smoke had been seen at
Taylor Rock, though many eyes had watched anxiously for the sign. She
listened, and she knew that they were going to give up--knew that they
should have given up long ago but for her. With no fire in the cave
none could live for long in this weather, she heard them muttering.
The cave was drifted full of snow, in the opinion of those who had the
most experience with mountain snows. The lost couple might be in the
cave, but they were not alive. One man said that they were probably
under some fallen tree--and they were many--or buried deep in a gulch
somewhere. Certainly after ten days neither Jack nor Marion nor Mike
could by any possibility be alive in the hills.
Kate was asleep and did not hear. The professor was out there with the
others--probably they thought that Mrs. Singleton Corey was asleep
also, for it was growing late. Her chapped knuckles pressed against
her trembling lips, she listened awhile, until she could bear no
more. How kind they were--these men of Quincy! How they had struggled
to keep alive her courage! She got up, opened the door very quietly,
and went out into the strong, bluish haze of tobacco smoke that
enveloped the men huddled there around the kitchen stove for a last
pipe before they turned in. She stood within the door, like "madam
president" risen to address the meeting. Like "madam president" she
waited for their full attention before she spoke.
"I wish to thank you gentlemen for the heroic efforts you have put
forth during the past week," she said, and her low-pitched voice had
the full resonance that was one of her charms as a leader among women.
"It would be impossible for me to express my grateful appreciation--"
She stopped, pressed her lips together for a minute, and when she felt
sure of her composure she made a fresh start. "I cannot speak of the
risks you have taken in these forests, but I--I appreciate your
bravery. I know that you have been in danger from falling trees,
nearly every day that you spent searching for--those who are lost. I
have learned from your conversations among yourselves how useless you
consider the search. I--I am forced to agree with you. Miss Humphrey
and Professor Harrison have long ago given up all hope--they say
that--that no one could possibly be alive.... I--I know that a mother
can be terribly selfish when her son...." Hard as she fought for
steadiness, she could not speak of it. She stood with the back of one
hand pressed hard against her shaking lips, swallowing the sobs that
threatened to balk her determination to speak a little of the humble
gratitude that filled her. The men looked down in embarrassed silence,
and in a minute she went on.
"Gentlemen, I know that you have gone on searching because you felt
that I wanted you to do it, and you were too kind-hearted to tell me
the truth. So I beg of you now to go back to your families. I--I must
not let my trouble keep you away from them any longer. I--I--have
given up."
Some one drew a long breath, audible in that room, where tragedy held
them in silence. It was as though those two lost ones lay stark and
cold in their midst; as though this woman was looking down upon her
son. But when the silence had tightened their nerves, she spoke again
with the quiet of utter hopelessness.
"I must ask you to help me get down the mountain somehow. If the
railroad is in operation I shall return home. I wish to say that while
I shall carry with me the bitterest sorrow of my life, I shall carry
also a deep sense of the goodness and the bravery--"
Proud, yes. But proud as she was she could not go on. She turned
abruptly and went back into the room where Kate slept heavily. A
little later the sound of stifled sobbing, infinitely sad, went out to
the men who sat with cooling pipes in their palms, constrained to
silence still by the infinite sadness of motherhood bereaved.
"Tomorrow morning we better start in clearing the road," one muttered
at last. "Somebody can ride down and have a team come up after her."
"It's no use to hunt any longer," another observed uneasily. "The snow
would cover up--"
"Sh-sh-sh!" warned the professor, and nodded his head toward the room
door.
In her own home, that had been closed for months, Mrs. Singleton Corey
folded her black veil up over the crown of her black hat and picked up
the telephone. Her white hair was brushed up from her forehead in a
smooth, cloudy fashion that had in it no more than a hint of marcelle
waving. Her face was almost as white as her hair, and her eyes were
black-shadowed and sunken. She sat down wearily upon the chair beside
the telephone stand, waited dull-eyed for Central to answer, and then
called up her doctor. Her voice was calm--too calm. It was absolutely
colorless.
Her doctor, on the other hand, became agitated to the point of
stuttering when he realized who was speaking to him. His disjointed
questions grated on Mrs. Singleton Corey, who was surfeited with
emotion and who craved nothing so much as absolute peace.
"Yes, certainly I am back," she drawled with a shade of impatience.
"Just now--from the depot.... No, I am feeling very well--No, I have
not read the papers, and I do not intend to.... Really, doctor, I can
see no necessity of your coming out here. I am perfectly all right, I
assure you. I shall call up the maids and let them know that I am
home, but first I have called you, just to ease your mind--providing,
of course, that you have one. You seem to have lost it quite
suddenly...."
She listened, and caught her breath. Her lips whitened, and her
nostrils flared suddenly with what may have been anger. "No, doctor ... I
did not--find--Jack." She forced herself to say it. He would
have to know, she reflected.
She was about to add something that would make her statement sound
less bald, but the doctor had hung up, muttering something she did not
catch. She waited, holding the receiver to her ear until Central, in
that supercilious voice we all dislike so much, asked crisply, "Are
you waiting?" Then Mrs. Singleton Corey also hung up her receiver and
sat there idly gazing at her folded hands.
"I must have a manicure at once," she said to herself irrelevantly,
though the heart of her was yearning toward Jack's room upstairs. She
wanted to go up and lie down on Jack's bed; and put her head on Jack's
pillow. It seemed to her that it would bring her a little closer to
Jack. And then she had a swift vision of Taylor Rock, where Jack was
said to have his cave. She closed her eyes and shuddered. She could
not get close to Jack--she had never been close to him, since he
passed babyhood. Perhaps.... The girl, Marion--had Jack loved her? She
was grown used to the jealousy that filled her when she thought of
Marion. She forced herself now to think pityingly of the girl, dead up
there in that awful snow.
She went upstairs, forgetting to telephone to the maids as she had
intended. She moved slowly, apathetically, pausing long before the
closed door of Jack's room. She would not go in, after all. Why dig
deeper into the grief that must be mastered somehow, if she would go
on living? She remembered the maids, and when she had put on one of
her soft, silk house gowns that she used to like so well, she went
slowly down the stairs, forgetting that she had a telephone in her
room, her mind swinging automatically to the one in the hall that she
had used as she came in. She had just reached it when the doctor came
hurrying up the steps and pressed the bell button. She saw him dimly
through the curtained glass of the door, and frowned while she let him
in. And then--
She knew that the doctor was propelled violently to one side by some
one coming behind him, and she knew that she was dreaming the rest of
it. The feel of Jack's arm around her shoulders, and Jack's warm,
young lips on her cheeks and her lips and her eyelids, and the sound
of Jack's voice calling her endearing pet names that she had never
heard him speak while she was awake and he was with her--It was a
delicious dream, and Mrs. Singleton Corey smiled tremulously while the
dream lasted.