RUNNING WATER
It was a thrush, singing in the early morning rain, that awakened Betsey
next day. She had slept at the cottage, on the couch beside the
toy-cupboard and had seen through the window, as she dropped asleep, the
sky all bright with stars and had thought vaguely of how they must be
shining in the pool. Through her dreams, however, she had heard, toward
the dawn, the patter of rain on the sloping roof above her head and she
had remembered how dry the grass was growing and how thirsty the garden,
and had smiled to hear it fall. The thrush seemed to be glad also, for
he sat just opposite her window, hidden among the wet leaves, and
singing with all his soul to greet the gray morning. She got up and
knelt by the casement to watch him, while he, too intent upon his trills
and warbles and flute-like runs, seemed to pay no heed to the fact that
some one was peering at him over the sill. When he had finished and
flown away, when the cool rain had ceased and the sun was beginning to
send long rays into the dripping garden, she remembered for the first
time that this was the long-dreaded day, the morning of the
examinations.
For some reason that she could not explain, she no longer minded the
thought at all. The events of the day before had seemed to clear her
mind, to drive the cobwebs from her brain, to give her courage. David,
she knew, when there was nothing more he could do in preparation, had
begun to look forward to the occasion since the very fact that the
chances were against him lent some excitement to the affair. What he did
know he had mastered well, but did he know the right things? He had
reached a point where he was quite on edge to find out. It was necessary
for him to take his examinations at the college itself, so that he would
be gone for the three days that they lasted and would not see Betsey
again until the trials of both of them were over. As she dressed and
went downstairs she was so busy wishing him luck that she had little
time to think of herself.
After all her nervous worry, she was astonished at her present calm,
that lasted even while she sat in the big quiet school room with fifty
others, waiting for questions to be distributed. The one thought that
kept going through her head, oddly enough, was, “I am so glad I did not
go with Aunt Susan!” The paper was handed to her, Plane and Solid
Geometry, the most difficult subject first as it should be. She smiled
joyfully as she saw, like the face of an old friend looking up at her,
the question concerning the frustum of a pyramid.
It was three days later and the last of the trial was over. Elizabeth
had felt unexcited throughout, but now was beginning to seem a little
jaded, as though the pouring out of so much knowledge had left her limp
and empty. She had not seen much of Miss Miranda, so full had the days
been, merely contenting herself with telephoning or consulting with Mrs.
Bassett at the kitchen door. But now she was climbing the hill again,
with none too energetic feet, to be sure, and rather a dull and vacant
head, but with a heart lightened of a very definite burden. She could
not know her exact standing for some days, but she had, she admitted to
herself frankly, no great doubt as to the result. Nothing had seemed
very difficult, for steady and conscientious labor had proved its value
at last. She felt rather more concerned about David. His work, also,
would be finished to-day, so that she might hope to see him at the
cottage that evening.
A telegraph messenger passed her, coasting joyously down the hill on his
bicycle as she was toiling upward. At the gate she found Michael, the
yellow dispatch still in his hand.
“I’m going in, shall I take it to Miss Miranda?” she said, but the old
Irishman shook his head.
“It is for me,” he answered, and, as though to prove it, turned the
envelope so that she could see the address, “Mr. Michael Martin,
Somerset Lane.”
Michael somehow seemed rather an unexpected person to be receiving
telegrams, but he was in one of his silent moods, unfortunately, and did
not offer to tell his news.
“I am needing help in the garden,” was all he condescended to say as he
pocketed the envelope; “could you give me a hand with pulling the
lettuce? Miss Miranda has not been able to come inside the place for a
week.”
“I’ll just go in and speak to her first,” Elizabeth said, a remark that
seemed to displease him greatly.
“As you will,” he returned, shrugging his shoulders grumpily, “but it
will be dark before long and plenty of time for visiting then. It will
be black darkness, too, for there is no moon now.”
With a sigh Betsey agreed that he was probably right and that he should,
at any rate, be humored. The garden did indeed look neglected and in
want of the care Miss Miranda was accustomed to give it. The very hens
and ducks seemed to be moping and less cheerful in their clucks and
quackings, as though they missed their mistress and found the
unsympathetic Michael a very sorry substitute. When Betsey was once
established between the lettuce rows he went away at once to hoe the
sweet corn, so that conversation was impossible.
They labored in silence for a long time until it began to grow too dark
to see clearly.
“I will not stop before he does,” Betsey told herself, rather nettled at
his uncordial behavior; “he will think I am shirking if I do.”
The fresh green lettuce heads had grown huge and compact like gigantic
roses and filled, heaping full, the big basket he had set beside her.
She went on thinning them out, pulling chance weeds, clipping the long
stalks, determined to make no move until the unapproachable Michael
suggested it. She thought much of David as she worked there in the dusk.
Had he done well or had chance gone against him? Would he come soon to
report how things were or would his return be so late that she would
have to wait until morning to hear how he had fared? With a little good
luck he should have got through famously but, somehow, good luck had not
lately seemed to be the order of the day.
“I am beginning to be just like Michael,” she reproved herself severely
when she reached this point in her meditations. It was fortunate that
she did not speak aloud for there was the old gardener himself, just
behind her.
She thought that he had come to bid her stop working but, instead, he
stood leaning on his hoe, saying nothing. But he was there with
something to say, that was evident, for presently, having shifted his
feet once or twice and cleared his throat, he was able to begin.
“Miss Betsey,” he said slowly, “you don’t believe in bad spirits, do
you, the kind that bring ill luck to people that deserve only the best
and fairest fortune on earth?”
She was quite startled that his thoughts and hers should have been
following so closely the same channel, but she would not admit the fact.
“No, Michael, I don’t,” she answered firmly. “Do you?”
“I’m not sure that I don’t, nor yet that I do,” he replied doubtfully;
“sometimes I think I have let my fancies run away with me my whole life
through, so now that I am a foolish old man, I cannot believe my own
senses. You don’t think for instance—” he lowered his voice almost to a
whisper and looked at her keenly through the shadows, “you don’t think
that there is anything queer amiss up yonder at the old house?”
“Michael!” cried Betsy, too much astonished to keep up her pretense of
calmness. “Michael, have you noticed it too? What was it you saw?”
“It was not so much what I saw, for my eyes are dim and old now, it was
what I heard. On the very night when Mr. Donald was here and Mr.
Reynolds was stricken, that was when I heard. Something moving in the
dark, something that muttered to Itself, that stood by the pool for a
minute there in the black and white of the moonlight. I heard the water
splash like a fish jumping, but I am thinking it was more like a charm
for bad luck being dropped in, as such Creatures love to do. I used to
think that the bad spell was only on the old house but it is on the
water now also, on that pool that lies so deep and quiet and pictures
back the stars. If it was running water, now, the spell would carry
away, but not with a still basin as that is, the evil lies there so
quiet and works and works—”
“Michael,” cried Betsey, “you should not believe such things!”
He shook his head.
“I’d like to put it by,” he declared, “but how can a man do so? Can you
deny there is sorrow come to this house, undeserved and unforeseen? Yes,
the curse of ill luck will lie on a house until some one knows how to
drive it away. And the best time for lifting such a spell is in the hour
before midnight and in the dark of the moon.”
Betsey stood up and took her basket.
“I am not going to believe what you say,” she insisted stoutly, “and I
am going in to see Miss Miranda. You have not told me yet how her father
is.”
“I had orders not to tell you until I must,” he said gently. “He is
worse, much worse. The doctor has been here all day and Miss Miranda
looks like a ghost.”
“Oh,” cried Betsey in distress, then added with almost a sob of relief,
“Oh, here’s David!”
For David, striding out of the shadows, seemed a very comforting
presence.
“I nailed them,” he announced elegantly the moment he came near. “The
examiners were a clever set of fellows, they managed to guess at all the
things I knew and to ask me about very little else. I make them my
compliments. And now, how are things going?”
He heard the bad news in troubled silence, took up Elizabeth’s basket
without a word and turned to the house. Poor old Michael stood staring
after them, hopeless and distressed, unable to speak.
Miss Miranda stood by the door, talking to the doctor who was just
going.
“He is quieter,” the doctor was saying, “and the night may pass easily.
But if he should be delirious again—”
“I will be here, sir,” David announced briefly, at his side.
“You will? Good, you can be of some help if things go badly. And be sure
to call me the moment there is any change. If there were only something
that would rouse him from that stupor!”
Miss Miranda looked much like a shadow, but she greeted them as cheerily
as ever and seemed most eager to know how their affairs had gone during
the last three days, and was as happy as they were in the hopeful report
of results.
“I was rather worried about David,” she admitted, and he confessed
cheerfully that he had been much worse than worried about himself.
“At the last minute I began quite to enjoy the excitement of it,” he
declared, “but I don’t care to go through it a second time. I will never
cut things quite so close again.”
The cottage was to be crowded that night for Elizabeth was to sleep
there, upon Miss Miranda’s urging it, and David, since there were no
more spare beds, undertook to make up a couch for himself on one of the
low benches in the workshop. Elizabeth had opportunity, while Miss
Miranda had gone to fetch some blankets, of telling David that Michael,
too, had been seeing strange things in the garden of the ruined house.
“I can guess what Michael thought if he saw that moving light,” the boy
observed. “He would have a hundred explanations where we have not been
able to find one. When we get some of these other affairs off our minds,
we will have to go and watch for it again.”
“Y—yes,” assented Betsey. She was not entirely sure whether she cared to
investigate further.
“There is one thing that I have found out,” he went on. “I came across
the grounds of the old house this evening while it was still light, to
gather up some of the books I used to keep there and that I will not use
again. And I found that these last spring storms have weakened and
washed out those broken walls worse than ever, so that nothing but a
ghost or goblin could walk over them without coming to grief.”
Betsey said good night to David, good night to Miss Miranda, tiptoed
down the dimly lighted hall and closed the door of her own room.
“You must go to sleep early,” Miss Miranda had said. “I know you are
tired after your hard three days.”
Weary she was, but not sleepy at all. She felt a restless uneasiness
nor, try as she would, could she shake off the haunting depression
caused by Michael’s fantastic notion. She sat by the window, watching
big dark clouds creep upward from the horizon and blot out the stars,
she wandered about the room, she tried to read, she tried to sleep, but
all to no purpose. It was impossible to put out of her mind the
seriousness of Mr. Reynolds’ illness, nor could she forget Michael’s
solemn belief that ill luck lay heavy on the place and would not be
driven away.
“It’s nonsense,” she told herself again and again. “Why did I ever
listen to him?”
The pressure of excitement and distress became greater and greater
instead of less, became almost unendurable. She sat down before Miss
Miranda’s desk and lifted her hand to the key of the toy-cupboard How
often she had read in fairy stories of how the heroine of the tale, when
in complete despair, would break the magic nut, uncover the enchanted
box for a charm to bring help in time of need. She felt as though it
were much the same thing she was doing when she opened the doors of the
toy cupboard.
One after another she took down the treasures and set them before her,
the silver Saint Christopher, the little jade tree, the bowls and cups,
the ornaments and carvings. She tried to recollect the stories she had
heard but a few days ago, the gay adventures, the odd, absorbing tales.
Yet she came wandering back to the two of which she had heard first, the
silver saint and the little tree. They seemed to be more closely bound
up with her daily life, with Michael’s superstition and with that
steadfast purpose that dwelt in the Reynolds’ blood. From the two
friends who built their clipper ship in the face of all opposition down
to Miss Miranda and her father, all were willing to sacrifice so much
and work so untiringly to put into reality the substance of a dream. She
set the tree on the shelf again and in doing so brushed Saint
Christopher to the ground. Poor Michael, what strange ideas had taken
possession of his faithful old Irish soul!
“That pool that lies so deep and quiet and pictures back the stars. If
it was running water, now!”
Why did his rambling, senseless talk keep running through her head?
Little by little, however, calm and comfort seemed to come back to her
and at last, so late did she sit before the toy cupboard that drowsiness
came from mere force of habit and she got up and stumbled to her bed.
She slept soundly, but for a very little time, awakening with a start.
The rising clouds had brought high winds with them, winds that were
blustering about the corners of the little house and blowing sticks and
broken boughs across the steep roof above her head. Starting up with all
sleepiness vanished, she sat staring into the dark. There was a sound
above the others that she did not quite recognize, a sound like a door
banging or—no—it was the slamming of a gate. Again and again she heard
it, an unlocked gate swinging in the wild night wind. There was none
near enough for her to hear so plainly save the one in the high garden
wall.
Then suddenly there came into her mind, not gradually as answers to
puzzles often come, but all at once, full, clear and plain, the truth as
to that mystery of the goblin light. Why had she been so dense before,
why had she thought of it so late, when real harm might have already
come? She fumbled for her clothes in the dark, stumbling here and there
in too great haste even to find the lamp; she dressed pell-mell, flung
open the door and ran down the stairs. She was quiet in the upper hall,
but, in her hurry, had little thought of silence as she unbarred the
outer door.
The high, warm wind whirled her halfway across the lawn the moment she
stepped off the doorstep. The gate in the wall was swinging open just as
she had guessed, the path beyond stretched away like a black tunnel
through the trees. She was afraid, she hated to go alone, she felt very
small and powerless in all that empty darkness. Why had she not stopped
to call David? But no, it would have taken more time than she could
afford to lose. She was buffeted by the wind, brushed with ghostly hands
by the low-reaching shrubs; she was half sobbing with terror, but
nevertheless she ran onward.