THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH
Constance went up to her own rooms; she could hear her mother speaking,
in a room on the same floor, to one of the maids; but for her present
anxiety, her mother offered no help and could not even be consulted.
Nor could any message she might send to her father explain the
situation to him. She was throbbing with determination and action, as
she found her purse and counted the money in it. She never in her life
had gone alone upon an extended journey, much less been alone upon a
train over night. If she spoke of such a thing now, she would be
prevented; no occasion for it would be recognized; she would not be
allowed to go, even if "properly accompanied." She could not,
therefore, risk taking a handbag from the house; so she thrust
nightdress and toilet articles into her muff and the roomy pocket of
her fur coat. She descended to the side door of the house and,
unobserved, let herself out noiselessly on to the carriage drive. She
gained the street and turned westward at the first corner to a street
car which would take her to the railway station.
There was a train to the north every evening; it was not, she knew,
such a train as ran in the resort season, and she was not certain of
the exact time of its departure; but she would be in time for it. The
manner of buying a railway ticket and of engaging a berth were unknown
to her--there had been servants always to do these things--but she
watched others and did as they did. On the train, the berths had been
made up; people were going to bed behind some of the curtains. She
procured a telegraph blank and wrote a message to her mother, telling
her that she had gone north to join her father. When the train had
started, she gave the message to the porter, directing him to send it
from the first large town at which they stopped.
She left the light burning in its little niche at the head of the
berth; she had no expectation that she could sleep; shut in by the
green curtains, she drew the covers up about her and stared upward at
the paneled face of the berth overhead. Then new frightened distrust
of the man she had been about to marry flowed in upon her and became
all her thought.
She had not promised Uncle Benny that she would not marry Henry; her
promise had been that she would not engage herself to that marriage
until she had seen Uncle Benny again. Uncle Benny's own act--his
disappearance---had prevented her from seeing him; for that reason she
had broken her promise; and, from its breaking, something terrifying,
threatening to herself had come. She had been amazed at what she had
seen in Henry; but she was appreciating now that, strangely, in her
thought of him there was no sense of loss to herself. Her feeling of
loss, of something gone from her which could not be replaced, was for
Alan. She had had admiration for Henry, pride in him; had she mistaken
what was merely admiration for love? She had been about to marry him;
had it been only his difference from the other men she knew that had
made her do that? Unconsciously to herself, had she been growing to
love Alan?
Constance could not, as yet, place Henry's part in the strange
circumstances which had begun to reveal themselves with Alan's coming
to Chicago; but Henry's hope that Uncle Benny and Alan were dead was
beginning to make that clearer. She lay without voluntary movement in
her berth, but her bosom was shaking with the thoughts which came to
her.
Twenty years before, some dreadful event had altered Uncle Benny's
life; his wife had known--or had learned--enough of that event so that
she had left him. It had seemed to Constance and her father,
therefore, that it must have been some intimate and private event.
They had been confirmed in believing this, when Uncle Benny, in madness
or in fear, had gone away, leaving everything he possessed to Alan
Conrad. But Alan's probable relationship to Uncle Benny had not been
explanation; she saw now that it had even been misleading. For a
purely private event in Uncle Benny's life--even terrible
scandal--could not make Henry fear, could not bring terror of
consequences to himself. That could be only if Henry was involved in
some peculiar and intimate way with what had happened to Uncle Benny.
If he feared Uncle Benny's being found alive and feared Alan's being
found alive too, now that Alan had discovered Uncle Benny, it was
because he dreaded explanation of his own connection with what had
taken place.
Constance raised her window shade slightly and looked out. It was
still snowing; the train was running swiftly among low sand hills,
snow-covered, and only dimly visible through snow and dark. A
deep-toned, steady roar came to her above the noises of the train. The
lake! Out there, Alan and Uncle Benny were fighting, still struggling
perhaps, against bitter cold and ice and rushing water for their lives.
She must not think of that!
Uncle Benny had withdrawn himself from men; he had ceased to be active
in his business and delegated it to others. This change had been
strangely advantageous to Henry. Henry had been hardly more than a
common seaman then. He had been a mate--the mate on one of Uncle
Benny's ships. Quite suddenly he had become Uncle Benny's partner.
Henry had explained this to her by saying that Uncle Benny had felt
madness coming on him and had selected him as the one to take charge.
But Uncle Benny had not trusted Henry; he had been suspicious of him;
he had quarreled with him. How strange, then, that Uncle Benny should
have advanced and given way to a man whom he could not trust!
It was strange, too, that if--as Henry had said--their quarrels had
been about the business, Uncle Benny had allowed Henry to remain in
control.
Their quarrels had culminated on the day that Uncle Benny went away.
Afterward Uncle Benny had come to her and warned her not to marry
Henry; then he had sent for Alan. There had been purpose in these acts
of Uncle Benny's; had they meant that Uncle Benny had been on the verge
of making explanation--that explanation which Henry feared--and that he
had been--prevented? Her father had thought this; at least, he had
thought that Uncle Benny must have left some explanation in his house.
He had told Alan that, and had given Alan the key to the house so that
he could find it. Alan had gone to the house--
In the house Alan had found some one who had mistaken him for a ghost,
a man who had cried out at sight of him something about a ship--about
the _Miwaka_, the ship of whose loss no one had known anything except
by the sounding of the Drum. What had the man been doing in the house?
Had he too been looking for the explanation--the explanation that Henry
feared? Alan had described the man to her; that description had not
had meaning for her before; but now remembering that description she
could think of Henry as the only one who could have been in that house!
Henry had fought with Alan there! Afterwards, when Alan had been
attacked upon the street, had Henry anything to do with that?
Henry had lied to her about being in Duluth the night he had fought
with Alan; he had not told her the true cause of his quarrels with
Uncle Benny; he had wished her to believe that Uncle Benny was dead
when the wedding ring and watch came to her--the watch which had been
Captain Stafford's of the _Miwaka_! Henry had urged her to marry him
at once. Was that because he wished the security that her father--and
she--must give her husband when they learned the revelation which Alan
or Uncle Benny might bring?
If so, then that revelation had to do with the _Miwaka_. It was of the
_Miwaka_ that Henry had cried out to Alan in the house; they were the
names of the next of kin of those on the _Miwaka_ that Uncle Benny had
kept. That was beginning to explain to her something of the effect on
Henry of the report that the Drum was telling that some on Ferry Number
25 were alive, and why he had hurried north because of that. The
Drum--so superstition had said--had beat the roll of those who died
with the _Miwaka_; had beaten for all but one! No one of those who
accepted the superstition had ever been able to explain that; but Henry
could! He knew something more about the _Miwaka_ than others knew. He
had encountered the _Miwaka_ somehow or encountered some one saved from
the _Miwaka_; he knew, then, that the Drum had beaten correctly for the
_Miwaka_, that one was spared as the Drum had told! Who had that one
been? Alan? And was he now among those for whom the Drum had not yet
beat?
She recalled that, on the day when the _Miwaka_ was lost, Henry and
Uncle Benny had been upon the lake in a tug. Afterwards Uncle Benny
had grown rich; Henry had attained advancement and wealth. Her
reasoning had brought her to the verge of a terrible discovery. If she
could take one more step forward in her thought, it would make her
understand it all. But she could not yet take that step.
In the morning, at Traverse City--where she got a cup of coffee and
some toast in the station eating house--she had to change to a day
coach. It had grown still more bitterly cold; the wind which swept the
long brick-paved platform of the station was arctic; and even through
the double windows of the day coach she could feel its chill. The
points of Grand Traverse Bay were frozen across; frozen across too was
Torch Lake; to north of that, ice, snow-covered, through which frozen
rushes protruded, marked the long chain of little lakes known as the
"Intermediates." The little towns and villages, and the rolling fields
with their leafless trees or blackened stumps, lay under drifts. It
had stopped snowing, however, and she found relief in that; searchers
upon the lake could see small boats now--if there were still small
boats to be seen.
To the people in her Pullman, the destruction of the ferry had been
only a news item competing for interest with other news on the front
pages of their newspapers; but to these people in the day coach, it was
an intimate and absorbing thing. They spoke by name of the crew as of
persons whom they knew. A white lifeboat, one man told her, had been
seen south of Beaver Island; another said there had been two boats.
They had been far off from shore, but, according to the report cabled
from Beaver, there had appeared to be men in them; the men--her
informant's voice hushed slightly--had not been rowing. Constance
shuddered. She had heard of things like that on the quick-freezing
fresh water of the lakes--small boats adrift crowded with men sitting
upright in them, ice-coated, frozen, lifeless!
Petoskey, with its great hotels closed and boarded up, and its curio
shops closed and locked, was blocked with snow. She went from the
train directly to the telegraph office. If Henry was in Petoskey, they
would know at that office where he could be found; he would be keeping
in touch with them. The operator in charge of the office knew her, and
his manner became still more deferential when she asked after Henry.
Mr. Spearman, the man said, had been at the office early in the day;
there had been no messages for him; he had left instructions that any
which came were to be forwarded to him through the men who, under his
direction, were patroling the shore for twenty miles north of Little
Traverse, watching for boats. The operator added to the report she had
heard upon the train. One lifeboat and perhaps two had been seen by a
farmer who had been on the ice to the south of Beaver; the second boat
had been far to the south and west of the first one; tugs were cruising
there now; it had been many hours, however, after the farmer had seen
the boats before he had been able to get word to the town at the north
end of the island--St. James--so that the news could be cabled to the
mainland. Fishermen and seamen, therefore, regarded it as more likely,
from the direction and violence of the gale, that the boats, if they
continued to float, would be drifted upon the mainland than that they
would be found by the tugs.
Constance asked after her father. Mr. Sherrill and Mr. Spearman, the
operator told her, had been in communication that morning; Mr. Sherrill
had not come to Petoskey; he had taken charge of the watch along the
shore at its north end. It was possible that the boats might drift in
there; but men of experience considered it more probable that the boats
would drift in farther south where Mr. Spearman was in charge.
Constance crossed the frozen edges of the bay by sledge to Harbor
Point. The driver mentioned Henry with admiration and with pride in
his acquaintance with him; it brought vividly to her the recollection
that Henry's rise in life was a matter of personal congratulation to
these people as lending luster to the neighborhood and to themselves.
Henry's influence here was far greater than her own or her father's; if
she were to move against Henry or show him distrust, she must work
alone; she could enlist no aid from these.
And her distrust now had deepened to terrible dread. She had not been
able before this to form any definite idea of how Henry could threaten
Alan and Uncle Benny; she had imagined only vague interference and
obstruction of the search for them; she had not foreseen that he could
so readily assume charge of the search and direct, or misdirect, it.
At the Point she discharged the sledge and went on foot to the house of
the caretaker who had charge of the Sherrill cottage during the winter.
Getting the keys from him, she let herself into the house. The
electric light had been cut off, and the house was darkened by
shutters, but she found a lamp and lit it. Going to her room, she
unpacked a heavy sweater and woolen cap and short fur coat--winter
things which were left there against use when they opened the house
sometimes out of season--and put them on. Then she went down and found
her snowshoes. Stopping at the telephone, she called long distance and
asked them to locate Mr. Sherrill, if possible, and instruct him to
move south along the shore with whomever he had with him. She went out
then, and fastened on her snowshoes.
It had grown late. The early December dusk--the second dusk since
little boats had put off from Number 25--darkened the snow-locked land.
The wind from the west cut like a knife, even through her fur coat.
The pine trees moaned and bent, with loud whistlings of the wind among
their needles; the leafless elms and maples crashed their limbs
together; above the clamor of all other sounds, the roaring of the lake
came to her, the booming of the waves against the ice, the shatter of
floe on floe. No snow had fallen for a few hours, and the sky was even
clearing; ragged clouds scurried before the wind and, opening, showed
the moon.
Constance hurried westward and then north, following the bend of the
shore. The figure of a man--one of the shore patrols--pacing the ice
hummocks of the beach and staring out upon the lake, appeared vaguely
in the dusk when she had gone about two miles. He seemed surprised at
seeing a girl, but less surprised when he had recognized her. Mr.
Spearman, he told her, was to the north of them upon the beach
somewhere, he did not know how far; he could not leave his post to
accompany her, but he assured her that there were men stationed all
along the shore. She came, indeed, three quarters of a mile farther
on, to a second man; about an equal distance beyond, she found a third,
but passed him and went on.
Her legs ached now with the unaccustomed travel upon snowshoes; the
cold, which had been only a piercing chill at first, was stopping
feeling, almost stopping thought. When clouds covered the moon,
complete darkness came; she could go forward only slowly then or must
stop and wait; but the intervals of moonlight were growing longer and
increasing in frequency. As the sky cleared, she went forward quickly
for many minutes at a time, straining her gaze westward over the
tumbling water and the floes. It came to her with terrifying
apprehension that she must have advanced at least three miles since she
had seen the last patrol; she could not have passed any one in the
moonlight without seeing him, and in the dark intervals she had
advanced so little that she could not have missed one that way either.
She tried to go faster as she realized this; but now travel had become
more difficult. There was no longer any beach. High, precipitous
bluffs, which she recognized as marking Seven Mile Point, descended
here directly to the hummocked ice along the water's edge. She fell
many times, traveling upon these hummocks; there were strange,
treacherous places between the hummocks where, except for her
snowshoes, she would have broken through. Her skirt was torn; she lost
one of her gloves and could not stop to look for it; she fell again and
sharp ice cut her ungloved hand and blood froze upon her finger tips.
She did not heed any of these things.
She was horrified to find that she was growing weak, and that her
senses were becoming confused. She mistook at times floating ice,
metallic under the moonlight, for boats; her heart beat fast then while
she scrambled part way up the bluff to gain better sight and so
ascertained her mistake. Deep ravines at places broke the shores;
following the bend of the bluffs, she got into these ravines and only
learned her error when she found that she was departing from the shore.
She had come, in all, perhaps eight miles; and she was "playing out";
other girls, she assured herself--other girls would not have weakened
like this; they would have had strength to make certain no boats were
there, or at least to get help. She had seen no houses; those, she
knew, stood back from the shore, high upon the bluffs, and were not
easy to find; but she scaled the bluff now and looked about for lights.
The country was wild and wooded, and the moonlight showed only the
white stretches of the shrouding snow.
She descended to the beach again and went on; her gaze continued to
search the lake, but now, wherever there was a break in the bluffs, she
looked toward the shore as well. At the third of these breaks, the
yellow glow of a window appeared, marking a house in a hollow between
snow-shrouded hills. She turned eagerly that way; she could go only
very slowly now. There was no path; at least, if there was, the snow
drifts hid it. Through the drifts a thicket projected; the pines on
the ravine sides overhead stood so close that only a silver tracery of
the moonlight came through; beyond the pines, birch trees, stripped of
their bark, stood black up to the white boughs.
Constance climbed over leafless briars and through brush and came upon
a clearing perhaps fifty yards across, roughly crescent shaped, as it
followed the configuration of the hills. Dead cornstalks, above the
snow, showed ploughed ground; beyond that, a little, black cabin
huddled in the further point of the crescent, and Constance gasped with
disappointment as she saw it. She had expected a farmhouse; but this
plainly was not even that. The framework was of logs or poles which
had been partly boarded over; and above the boards and where they were
lacking, black building paper had been nailed, secured by big tin
discs. The rude, weather-beaten door was closed; smoke, however, came
from a pipe stuck through the roof.
She struggled to the door and knocked upon it, and receiving no reply,
she beat upon it with both fists.
"Who's here?" she cried. "Who's here?"
The door opened then a very little, and the frightened face of an
Indian woman appeared in the crack. The woman evidently had
expected--and feared--some arrival, and was reassured when she saw only
a girl. She threw the door wider open, and bent to help unfasten
Constance's snowshoes; having done that, she led her in and closed the
door.
Constance looked swiftly around the single room of the cabin. There
was a cot on one side; there was a table, home carpentered; there were
a couple of boxes for clothing or utensils. The stove, a good range
once in the house of a prosperous farmer, had been bricked up by its
present owners so as to hold fire. Dried onions and yellow ears of
corn hung from the rafters; on the shelves were little birchbark
canoes, woven baskets, and porcupine quill boxes of the ordinary sort
made for the summer trade. Constance recognized the woman now as one
who had come sometimes to the Point to sell such things, and who could
speak fairly good English. The woman clearly had recognized Constance
at once.
"Where is your man?" Constance had caught the woman's arm.
"They sent for him to the beach. A ship has sunk."
"Are there houses near here? You must run to one of them at once.
Bring whoever you can get; or if you won't do that, tell me where to
go."
The woman stared at her stolidly and moved away. "None near," she
said. "Besides, you could not get somebody before some one will come."
"Who is that?"
"He is on the beach--Henry Spearman. He comes here to warm himself.
It is nearly time he comes again."
"How long has he been about here?"
"Since before noon. Sit down. I will make you tea."
Constance gazed at her; the woman was plainly glad of her coming. Her
relief--relief from that fear she had been feeling when she opened the
door--was very evident. It was Henry, then, who had frightened her.
The Indian woman set a chair for her beside the stove, and put water in
a pan to heat; she shook tea leaves from a box into a bowl and brought
a cup.
"How many on that ship?"
"Altogether there were thirty-nine," Constance replied.
"Some saved?"
"Yes; a boat was picked up yesterday morning with twelve."
The woman seemed making some computation which was difficult for her.
"Seven are living then," she said.
"Seven? What have you heard? What makes you think so?"
"That is what the Drum says."
The Drum! There was a Drum then! At least there was some sound which
people heard and which they called the Drum. For the woman had heard
it.
The woman shifted, checking something upon her fingers, while her lips
moved; she was not counting, Constance thought; she was more likely
aiding herself in translating something from Indian numeration into
English. "Two, it began with," she announced. "Right away it went to
nine. Sixteen then--that was this morning very early. Now, all day
and to-night, it has been giving twenty. That leaves seven. It is not
known who they may be."
She opened the door and looked out. The roar of the water and the
wind, which had come loudly, increased, and with it the wood noises.
The woman was not looking about now, Constance realized; she was
listening. Constance arose and went to the door too. The Drum! Blood
prickled in her face and forehead; it prickled in her finger tips. The
Drum was heard only, it was said, in time of severest storm; for that
reason it was heard most often in winter. It was very seldom heard by
any one in summer; and she was of the summer people. Sounds were
coming from the woods now. Were these reverberations the roll of the
Drum which beat for the dead? Her voice was uncontrolled as she asked
the woman:
"Is that the Drum?"
The woman shook her head. "That's the trees."
Constance's shoulders shook convulsively together. When she had
thought about the Drum--and when she had spoken of it with others who,
themselves, never had heard it--they always had said that, if there
were such a sound, it was trees. She herself had heard those strange
wood noises, terrifying sometimes until their source was
known--wailings like the cry of some one in anguish, which were caused
by two crossed saplings rubbing together; thunderings, which were only
some smaller trees beating against a great hollow trunk when a strong
wind veered from a certain direction. But this Indian woman must know
all such sounds well; and to her the Drum was something distinct from
them. The woman specified that now.
"You'll know the Drum when you hear it."
Constance grew suddenly cold. For twenty lives, the woman said, the
Drum had beat; that meant to her, and to Constance too now, that seven
were left. Indefinite, desperate denial that all from the ferry must
be dead--that denial which had been strengthened by the news that at
least one boat had been adrift near Beaver--altered in Constance to
conviction of a boat with seven men from the ferry, seven dying,
perhaps, but not yet dead. Seven out of twenty-seven! The score were
gone; the Drum had beat for them in little groups as they had died.
When the Drum beat again, would it beat beyond the score?
The woman drew back and closed the door; the water was hot now, and she
made the tea and poured a cup for Constance. As she drank it,
Constance was listening for the Drum; the woman too was listening.
Having finished the tea, Constance returned to the door and reopened
it; the sounds outside were the same. A solitary figure appeared
moving along the edge of the ice--the figure of a tall man, walking on
snowshoes; moonlight distorted the figure, and it was muffled too in a
great coat which made it unrecognizable. He halted and stood looking
out at the lake and then, with a sudden movement, strode on; he halted
again, and now Constance got the knowledge that he was not looking; he
was listening as she was. He was not merely listening; his body swayed
and bent to a rhythm--he was counting something that he heard.
Constance strained her ears; but she could hear no sound except those
of the waters and the wind.
"Is the Drum sounding now?" she asked the woman.
"No."
Constance gazed again at the man and found his motion quite
unmistakable; he was counting--if not counting something that he heard,
or thought he heard, he was recounting and reviewing within himself
something that he had heard before--some irregular rhythm which had
become so much a part of him that it sounded now continually within his
own brain; so that, instinctively, he moved in cadence to it. He
stepped forward again now, and turned toward the house.
Her breath caught as she spoke to the woman. "Mr. Spearman is coming
here now!"
Her impulse was to remain where she was, lest he should think she was
afraid of him; but realization came to her that there might be
advantage in seeing him before he knew that she was there, so she
reclosed the door and drew back into the cabin.