The discovery of the catastrophe came late to the inmates of the bungalow
on the crag. The suave resplendent sunset drew slowly to a majestic
close. The color deepened and glowed in the red west, even while the moon
made speed to climb the eastern mountains. Long burnished silver shafts
were all aslant in the woods, the dense autumnal foliage still visibly
russet and yellow, before Mrs. Briscoe came out on the veranda where
Bayne lounged in the swing, although no longer able to scan the pages of
the magazine in his hand.
"Don't you think it is odd that Ned is so late?" she asked.
"I don't know his habit," he rejoined carelessly. "But it is almost as
light as day in the road."
"He is usually so particular about detaining the servants," she said
uneasily, evidently a bit disconcerted. "Dinner has been ready to serve
for nearly an hour."
She returned indoors after a little, but Bayne still swung languidly to
and fro, all unprescient of the impending disclosure. Presently he
glanced through the window of the hall near at hand, noting how the tints
of the pretty gowns of the two women now before the fire imparted a rich
pictorial effect to the interior, the one costume being of a canary tint,
with bretelles and girdle of brown velvet, while Mrs. Briscoe's striking
beauty was accentuated by the artistic blending of two blues. In the
interval, while his attention was diverted from the scene without, a
change had supervened there, and he experienced a sudden disquieting
monition as he observed that the groom, who had been hovering in the road
at some distance, had been joined by another stable-man, and that the
butler, easily distinguishable from the others in the gathering gloom by
his white shirt front, was swiftly crossing the lawn toward them. Bayne
sprang from the swing, leaped silently from the veranda into the grass,
and walked quickly toward the group. They had already descried his
approach, and eagerly met him half way--in a state verging on panic, he
found to his own fright and dismay.
Something had happened, they averred. Mr. Briscoe was never late like
this. He had too much consideration for his household. He would not risk
occasioning Mrs. Briscoe anxiety. He would not keep little Archie out in
the night air--he was very particular about little Archie. Oh, Fairy-foot
was all right--there was not a horse in Tennessee that Mr. Briscoe could
not handle. They had no fear at all about the mare. But after Mr. Briscoe
had driven away, the groom who had been ordered to investigate the hotel
had found signs of intrusion in the vacant building. Broken victuals were
on the hearth of the serving-room adjoining the great dining-hall, and an
old slouched hat was lying in that apartment, evidently dropped
inadvertently near one of the tables. A rude lantern with a candle burned
down almost to the socket was in an upper chamber, usually illuminated by
acetylene gas, as was all the building. Bayne remembered, according the
circumstance a fresh and added importance, the fleeing apparition in the
vacant hotel that had frightened Lillian, and Mrs. Briscoe's declaration
that a light had flashed the previous night from the interior of the
deserted building. But this intrusion was not necessarily of inimical
significance, he argued. Tramps, perhaps, or some belated hunter stealing
a shelter from the blinding fog, or even petty thieves, finding an
unguarded entrance--it might mean no more. In fact, such intrusion was
the normal incident of any vacant house in remote seclusion, unprotected
by a caretaker. But this reasoning did not convince the servants.
Something had happened, they reiterated; something terrible had happened!
Bayne, flouting fear as a folly, yet himself feeling the cold chill of
dismay, dared not dismiss their anxieties as groundless. He hastily
arranged for a patrol of the only road by which Briscoe could return,
incongruously feeling at the moment absurd and shamefaced in view of his
host's indignation and ridicule should he presently appear. Bayne had
ordered the phaeton with the intention of himself rousing the
country-side and organizing a search when, to his consternation, the two
ladies, who had observed the colloguing group, issued on the veranda,
frantic with terror, pale and agonized. Both had grasped the fact of
disaster, albeit unformulated, yet both hoped against hope.
"Take me with you!" Lillian cried, seizing Bayne's wrist in a grip like
steel. "Take me to my child!"
He could not be rid of her importunacy, and he came to think it was well
that the two should be separated, for Mrs. Briscoe had not abandoned all
self-control, and her gallant struggle for composure appealed for his
aid.
"No," she had said firmly; "Ned would expect me to wait for him here.
Dead or alive, he will come back to me here."
He was glad to get Lillian out of her sight and hearing. With every
muscle relaxed, almost collapsed, curiously ghastly in her gay gown, she
was lifted bodily into the vehicle, repeating constantly with bloodless
lips and a strange, false, mechanical voice, "Take me to my dead child!"
Once as they spun swiftly through the misty sheen and dewy shadow, the
moisture-laden boughs that thrust across the narrow roadway now and again
filliping them on the cheeks with perfumed showers, she turned that
death-smitten face toward him and said in her natural, smooth tones, "You
have your revenge at last. It couldn't be a heavier blow!"
"I want you to be still!" he cried with vehement rudeness. "I can't drive
straight if you rattle me. I am taking you to your child."
And once more broke forth the eerie shrilling anew: "Take me to my child!
Take me to my dead child!"
At the first house that Bayne roused, he was encumbered and harassed by
her strange intolerance that they should speak of Briscoe at all; for the
summer sojourner was a favorite with his humble neighbors, and a great
tumult of concern ensued on the suggestion that he had encountered
disaster in some sort.
It all seemed to the jealous mother-heart to minimize her own sacred
grief. "But he had my child with him, my dead child!" she would shrill
out. And the slow rustic's formulation of a suggestion or a plan must
needs tarry in abeyance as he gazed awestruck at this ghastly apparition,
decked in trim finery, mowing and wringing her hands, shown under the
hood of the phaeton in the blended light of the moon and the
mountaineer's lantern, while his household stood half-clad in the doorway
and peered out, mute and affrighted, as at a spectre.
The scanty population of the district turned out to the last man. The
woods of the vicinity were pervaded with exploring parties, now and again
hallooing their signals, till the crags rang with the melancholy
interchange of hail and hopeless response. In fact, the night was nearly
spent before a hunter, roused by the echoing clamors, joined the search
with the statement that he had been at a "deer stand" in the valley
during the afternoon, and had noted at a distance some object crash down
from the summit of a certain crag. He had fancied it only a fragment of
the rock falling, and had not the curiosity to leave his occupation and
go so far to investigate the nature of a circumstance seemingly of so
little significance.
Thus it came about that the inquisition of the coroner's jury resulted in
a verdict of death by accident. It was supposed that the little child's
body was crushed indistinguishably in the mangled mass of horse and man,
themselves scarcely to be disintegrated in the fall from so stupendous a
height. The big white beaver hat of the child was found floating on the
surface of a deep pool hard by, half quagmire, half quicksand, and would
in itself have sufficed to dispel any doubts of his fate, had doubt been
entertained. The burial was accomplished as best might be, and the
dolorous incident seemed at an end. But throughout the dry, soft Indian
summer the little boy's jaunty red coat swung in the wind, unseen,
unheeded, on the upper boughs of a tree in the valley, where it had
chanced to lodge when the treacherous Copenny had cast it forth from the
bluff above to justify the hypothesis of the fall of the little fellow
from those awful heights.
Gradually the catastrophe ceased to be the paramount sensation of the
country-side. Bayne's interests of necessity had drawn him back to his
city office. He had remonstrated against the decision of the two bereaved
women to remain in the bungalow for a time. He had advocated change,
travel, aught that might compass a surcease of the indulgence of sorrow
and dreary seclusion, that are so dear and so pernicious to the stricken
heart. But in their affliction the two clung together and to the place
endeared by tender associations of the recent habitation of the beloved
and vanished. They said that none could feel for them as each for the
other, and, in fact, their awful tragedy had cemented an affection
already almost sisterly. Thus the bungalow caged through the opening of
wintry weather these tenants of woe who had come like the birds for
sunshine and summer only. Since the community continued in absolute
ignorance that any crime had been committed, there was no sense of
insecurity or apprehension of danger, other than might menace any country
house, isolated and secluded in situation. The normal precautions were
taken, the household was strengthened, and Mrs. Marable, Lillian's aunt,
or rather her uncle's wife, who had come to her at the first news of her
affliction, had consented to remain during her stay. Owing to the
discovery of the intrusion into the hotel, with no other fear than
material injury to the property by frisky boys of the vicinity, the
management had installed there a caretaker with his family, who was also,
as weather favored, to superintend some repairs to the building. It had
been arranged by Bayne, previous to his departure, that the eldest son, a
stalwart youth of twenty, should sleep in a room at the bungalow, having
his rifle loaded and pistols at hand, provided against any menace of
disturbance. Thus the winter closed in upon a seclusion and solitude of
funereal intimations.
The winds were loosed and rioted through the lonely recesses of the
craggy ravines and the valley with a wild and eerie blare; the leaves,
rustling shrilly, all sere now, so long the weather had held dry, fled in
myriads before the gusts. Soon they lay on the ground in dense masses,
and in the denudation of the trees the brilliant tints of the little
coat, swinging so high in the blast, caught the eye of a wandering
hunter. At first sight, he thought it but a flare of the autumnal
foliage, and gave it no heed, but some days afterward its persistence
struck his attention. It seemed a tragic and piteous thing when he
discovered its nature. He cut the tree down, too high it was lodged for
other means to secure it, and after the county officials had examined it,
he brought it to the mother.
Over it Lillian shed such tears as have bedewed the relics of the dead
since first this sad old world knew loss, since first a grave was filled.
How unavailing! How lacerating! How consoling! She began to feel a
plaintive sympathy for all the bereaved of earth, and her heart and mind
grew more submissive as she remembered that only for this cause Jesus
wept, albeit a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
The little coat, so gayly decorated, reminded her of another coat of many
colors, its splendor testimony of the gentlest domestic affection,
brought stained with blood to another parent long ago, to interpret the
cruel mystery of a son's death. And after all these centuries she felt
drawn near to Jacob in the tender realization of a common humanity, and
often repeated his despairing words, "I shall go down into the grave unto
my son mourning."
Then her heart was pierced with self-pity for the contrast of his
gratuitous affliction with her hopeless grief. So happy in truth was he,
despite his thought of woe, that he should have lamented as dead his son,
who was so full of life the while, whose future on earth was destined to
be so long and so beneficent. She spoke of this so often and so wistfully
that it seemed to Gladys to precipitate an illusion, which afterward
absorbed her mind to the exclusion of all else.