They started out, scuffling knee-deep through the snow, holding the
lantern up, now here, now there, to be sure that they were in the road,
faintly descrying a house lamp set in some window and glowing feebly
like the most nebulous of stars, turning their faces aside to draw
breath and then facing the storm and pushing on.
“What’s that, Stephen?” asked the Doctor. “Don’t you hear something over
there?”
“No, sir.”
“There it is again.”
The cry reached them again, a long, hungry, wild cry.
“That awful sound?” asked the Sheriff.
The scream came again, mad, terrible and muffled as if it were being
choked under heavy blankets.
Both men came to a standstill.
“My God, Stephen, what has happened?”
“Do you think it’s one of those Canada lynxes lost in the storm?”
“Did you hear it then?” the Doctor asked.
“No, but--”
“There it is again!”
“It isn’t a lynx, Doctor, but I don’t know what it is. It’s out there in
the direction we’re going. The walk’s beyond here some place.”
“Isn’t it over there?”
“Yes, there.”
The Doctor was fumbling with the toe of his heavy golosh for the little
step up that would tell him where the path led in to the lock-up.
“I’ve found it,” he said. “Come, make haste!”
Even as they turned at right angles to the direction in which they had
been walking, the scream came again and following it, distinct even in
the tumult of the tempest were loud blows and a sound as of running feet
clip-clop, clippity-clop, clippity-clippity-clop.
“He’s trying to get out.”
“Hurry!” shouted the Doctor. “Something’s gone wrong there.”
Weird, maddened, frantic, the cry rose again and with it the beat of the
stamping feet: clip-clop, clip-clop, clippity-clippity-clop.
“Listen,” said the sheriff, “he’s calling for something!”
Out through the rage of wind and snow, out through the night, out of the
darkness, the cry shaped itself into words: “Pearl! Aah-yaiah! Pearl!
Pearl! Aah-yaiah!”
“It’s the little one,” came from the Sheriff.
“Something’s gone wrong,” muttered the Doctor.
“Aah-yaiah! Pearl! Pearl!” came the wail again. “Aah-yaiah, little shoe,
bring her in! Bring her in! Aah-yaiah!”
“Something about a shoe,” replied the Doctor. “Here,” he shouted towards
the lock-up, “be quiet there! We’re coming. Be quiet!”
“Pearl! Pearl! Pearl! Aah-yaiah!” rose wildly and was whirled off into
the vastness of the storm.
“Can you see him anywhere?” asked the Doctor.
“Has he got out?” asked the Sheriff.
“No, see there! See his face, his eyes, he’s up on the door clinging to
the bars.”
“He’s gone mad,” said the Sheriff.
“Something is wrong,” came the reply.
“Aah-yaiah, little shoe, bring her in--bring Pearl in!” rose in a wail.
“Bring her in--can’t get out--bring her in. Aah-yaiah, Pearl, Pearl!”
The Doctor held the lantern high and close to the bars. Its light
gleamed on tawny hair, the blood-shot eyes, the distorted face, the
clinging hands of the Sun Chaser, and upon the heel of a little shoe
stuck fast between the bars.
“There’s her shoe,” whispered the Doctor.
He held up the lantern looking into the cell.
“What’s this?”
The Sheriff stumbled, leaned over and took out of the snow a loaf of
bread still in its paraffin paper wrapping.
“Bread,” said the Sheriff.
He held the lantern high and, his face close to the knotted, clinging
fingers of the Sun Chaser, peered further into the lock-up.
“Aah-yaiah,” wailed the Sun Chaser.
There was froth about his lips and snow shining in his hair. And he
chattered with his teeth and shook his hair, and, clinging to the bars,
rattled them.
“He must have seen her,” muttered the Doctor, “she’s here somewhere.”
“Waiting for the Sun--the sun--the sun,” repeated the Sun Chaser. “Sun
up and Pearl found--little Pearl!”
“Here,” said the Sheriff, and his voice was frightened, “here!”
The Sheriff was brushing the snow away from the child’s white face.
The Doctor turned on the Sheriff. “My God, see what you’ve done!”
The Sheriff stood looking down rigidly at the swift work of the Doctor
in uncovering the child, the light of the lantern revealing the face and
the white throat.
The Doctor dropped on his knees, thrust his arms deep into the snow,
under the child, and, gathering her up gently, rose to his feet again.
In the light of the lantern which the Sheriff held, the child’s arms
could be seen pointing stiff and unmoving upwards, the little fingers
still crooked as they had been when they were wrenched from the bars.
Her eyes were closed and the snowflakes on the little forehead made a
twinkling halo about her hair.
“We’ll take her in there. Unlock the door!” commanded the Doctor.
The Sheriff’s key grated in the lock and, Pearl’s little arms rigid and
upstretched, they stepped into the cell.
When he beheld Pearl and the Doctor the Sun Chaser smiled happily. He
touched the lantern and laughed childlikely, gratefully.
“Sun found Pearl--little Pearl came in--little shoe brought Pearl in!”
“Shall I stand against the door?” asked the Sheriff.
“No,” growled the Doctor, “somebody’s always been standing against any
door that might have let him out.”
The Sun Chaser touched his lips with the shoe he held in his hand, then
he touched the child’s cheek. “Little shoe, wake Pearl! Little shoe,
wake Pearl! More sun! More sun!”
Suddenly he leaped into the air and started running around the cell,
laughing, shaking his hair and clattering with wooden-shod and
leather-shod: clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, and humming over and
over, “Going after it--going after it--going after more sun for little
Pearl!”
“Light up whatever you have here,” said the Doctor.
“There is no lamp here,” came from the Sheriff.
The Doctor was chafing Pearl’s hands with snow. “I suppose you think
when a man gets into a place like this he needs less light rather than
more. Eh?”
“Keep that door open,” commanded the Doctor.
The Sheriff set his lantern down and turned to push the door open.
The Sun Chaser seized it, crying out, “Here’s sun. Doctor, here’s sun
for little Pearl.”
“Set it down, Ambrose,” commanded the Doctor quietly, “I need it just
there for the child.”
Ambrose set it down and then came and sat on the floor beside the
Doctor.
“Pearl asleep?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the Doctor.
“Oh!” said the Sun Chaser. “Sun coming to my Pearl!”
“Now,” said the Doctor, “start up the stove here!”
“There isn’t any,” admitted Stephen Short. And he dropped his head
against the upright of the open door and began to sob. “Don’t blame me,
for God’s sake,” he begged.
“I don’t,” growled the Doctor, tenderly stripping the white shoulders of
the child. “It’s what you represent I blame.”
The Sun Chaser paused in the midst of tossing the child’s shoe up into
the air and looked at the Sheriff.
“Don’t cry, boy,” he said, “sun’s coming!”
Then he continued his play. Wooden-shod on the knee of leather-shod, he
kissed the little shoe and tossed it into the air.
From the doorway continued the heavy sobbing of the Sheriff, mingled
with the long drawn-out howl of the wind.
Reassuringly the Sun Chaser looked up at the Sheriff and smiled. “Sun’s
warm, never mind,” he said.
Again he leapt into the air, and started running about the cell,
laughing, shaking his hair, and clattering with wooden-shod and
leather-shod: clip-clop, clippity-clop, clip-clop, clippity-clop, and
humming to himself, “Going after sun for Pearl, after sun for Pearl.
Sun’s warm!”
“See the child’s hands,” muttered the Doctor, “just as they froze
clinging about the bars.”
* * * * *
Whether the fine white lines of birch saplings etch the sombreness of
bare woods or the golden leaves spread a glow through misty days, or
spring flows again through every artery of the great world; whether the
edges of the mist over the meadows about Northerly are smoke yellow with
saffron from the autumn maple trees or silvery as the depths of a little
pool where one might wash and become pure; whether the chaliced sunlight
brim in the thick, translucent stems of plants or snow twinkle and melt
on the globes of village lamps; whether gray stones be luminous at dawn
or pale in the full light; whether Night lean down from the cliffs and
draw dusk with him to passion and the stars; whether the shepherd’s
purse be full or empty, wings flash or lightning glow, seed pods swell
or rattle in the wind,--many a pilgrim passed through Northerly, there
to lean hands on staff before a ruinous little building set somewhere
between school house and paper-hanger’s, and there to gaze and gaze at a
child’s shoe which no hands had ever withdrawn from between the bars
whence a child’s foot had slipped from shoe to snow.
Many years have gone by, but neither in wind nor in rain, sunlight or
darkness, at dawn or dusk, has any one ever been pushed over that
threshold into the cell again. Those who believed that Christ was no
longer in the world, those who believed that Christ was; those with
broken lives and those whose lives were whole; they, who, spending
themselves in good works, were yet hungry, and those who did less and
yet were satisfied through faith; they who had found themselves and they
who in dreams by night and work by day sought for themselves; they who
were young and would learn; they who still chased the sun and they who
had found it; and they who were old and had a brave farewell to make;
yea, the running feet of children between schoolhouse and
paper-hanger’s--all, all, passed that way, paused, gazed upon the little
shoe, beaten upon by every wind of heaven, warmed by every ray of sun,
thought of the price paid, some of the lesson learned, heard the
ceaseless tapping of the branches on the roof of the old place like an
echo of long forgotten steps; clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop,
clip-clop, felt a little unseen hand placed in their hand, and passed
on,--comforted by a child’s love.