To come upon the street again was like the confused awakening from a
dream. With the first few steps Jessica found herself shivering in an
extremity of cold, yet still uncomfortably warm. A sudden passing spasm
of giddiness, too, made her head swim so that for the instant she feared
to fall. Then, with an added sense of weakness, she went on, wearily and
desponding.
The recollection of this novel and curious happiness upon which she
had stumbled only a few moments before took on now the character of
self-reproach. The burning headache had returned, and with it came a
pained consciousness that it had been little less than criminal in
her to weakly dally in Horace’s office when such urgent responsibility
rested upon her outside. If the burden of this responsibility appeared
too great for her to bear, now that her strength seemed to be so
strangely leaving her, there was all the more reason for her to set her
teeth together, and press forward, even if she staggered as she went.
Only--where to find Reuben Tracy! The search had been made cruelly
hopeless by that shameful delay; and she blamed herself with fierceness
for it, as she racked her brain for some new plan, wondering whether she
ought to have asked Horace or gone into some of the other offices.
There were groups of men standing here and there on the comers--a little
away from the full light of the street-lamps, as if unwilling to court
observation. These knots of workmen had a sinister significance to her
feverish mind. She had the clew to the terrible mischief which some of
them intended--which no doubt even now they were canvassing in furtive
whispers--and only Tracy could stop it, and she was powerless to find
him!
There came slouching along the sidewalk, as she grappled with this
anguish of irresolution, a slight and shabby figure which somehow
arrested her attention. It was a familiar enough figure--that of old
“Cal” Gedney; and there was nothing unusual or worthy of comment in
the fact that he was walking unsteadily by himself, with his gaze fixed
intently on the sidewalk. He had passed again out of the range of her
cursory glance before she suddenly remembered that he was a lawyer, and
even some kind of a judge.
She turned swiftly and almost ran after him, clutching his sleeve as she
came up to him, and breathing so hard with weakness and excitement that
for the moment she could not speak.
The ’squire looked up, and angrily shook his arm out of her grasp.
“Leave me alone, you hussy,” he snarled, “or I’ll lock you up!”
His misconstruction of her purpose cleared her mind. “Don’t be foolish,”
she said, hurriedly. “It’s a question of perhaps life and death! Do you
know where Reuben Tracy is? Or can you tell me where I can find out?”
“He don’t want to be bothered with _you_, wherever he is,” was the surly
response. “Be off with you!”
“I told you it was a matter of life and death,” she insisted, earnestly.
“He’ll never forgive you--you’ll never forgive yourself--if you know and
won’t tell me.”
The sincerity of the girl’s tone impressed the old man. It was not easy
for him to stand erect and unaided without swaying, but his mind was
evidently clear enough.
“What do you want with him?” he asked, in a less unfriendly voice. Then
he added, in a reflective undertone: “Cur’ous’t I sh’d want see Tracy,
too.”
“Then you do know where he is?”
“He’s drove out to ’s mother’s farm. Seems word come old woman’s sick.
You’re one of that Lawton tribe, aren’t you?”
“If I get a cutter, will you drive out there with me?” She asked the
question with swift directness. She added in explanation, as he stared
vacantly at her: “I ask that because you said you wanted to see him,
that’s all. I shall go alone if you won’t come. He’s _got_ to be back
here this evening, or God only knows what’ll happen! I mean what I say!”
“Do you know the road?” the ’squire asked, catching something of her
own eager spirit.
“Every inch of it! I was bom half a mile from where his mother lives.”
“But you won’t tell me what your business is?”
“I’ll tell you this much,” she whispered, hastily. “There is going to
be a mob at the Minster house to-night. A girl who knows one of the men
told--”
The old ’squire cut short the revelation by grasping her arm with
fierce energy.
“Come on--come on!” he said, hoarsely. “Don’t waste a minute. By
God! We’ll gallop the horses both ways.” He muttered to himself with
excitement as he dragged her along.
Jessica waited outside the livery stable for what seemed an interminable
period, while old “Cal” was getting the horses--walking up and down the
path in a state of mental torment which precluded all sense of bodily
suffering. When she conjured up before her frightened mind the
terrible consequences which delay might entail, every minute became an
intolerable hour of torture. There was even the evil chance that the old
man had been refused the horses because he had been drinking.
Finally, however, there came the welcome sound of mailed hoofs on the
plank roadway inside, and the reverberating jingle of bells; and then
the ’squire, with a spacious double-seated sleigh containing plenty of
robes, drew up in front of a cutting in the snow.
She took the front seat without hesitation, and gathered the lines into
her own hands. “Let me drive,” she said, clucking the horses into a
rapid trot. “I _should_ be home in bed. I’m too ill to sit up, unless
I’m doing something that keeps me from giving up.”
*****
Reuben Tracy felt the evening in the sitting-room of the old farmhouse
to be the most trying ordeal of his adult life.
Ordinarily he rather enjoyed than otherwise the company of his brother
Ezra--a large, powerfully built, heavily bearded man, who sat now beside
him in a rocking-chair in front of the wood stove, his stockinged feet
on the hearth, and a last week’s agricultural paper on his knee. Ezra
was a worthy and hard-working citizen, with an original way of looking
at things, and considerable powers of expression. As a rule, the
lawyer liked to talk with him, and felt that he profited in ideas and
suggestions from the talk.
But to-night he found his brother insufferably dull, and the task of
keeping down the “fidgets” one of incredible difficulty. His mother--on
whose account he had been summoned--was so much better that Ezra’s wife
had felt warranted in herself going off to bed, to get some much-needed
rest. Ezra had argued for a while, rather perversely, about the tariff
duty on wool, and now was nodding in his chair, although the dim-faced
old wooden clock showed it to be barely eight o’clock. The kerosene lamp
on the table gave forth only a feeble, reddened light through its smoky
chimney, but diffused a most powerful odor upon the stuffy air of the
over-heated room. A ragged and strong-smelling old farm dog groaned
offensively from time to time in his sleep behind the stove. Even the
draught which roared through the lower apertures in front of the stove
and up the pipe toward the chimney was irritating by the very futility
of its vehemence, for the place was too hot already.
Reuben mused in silence upon the chances which had led him so far
away from this drowsy, unfruitful life, and smiled as he found himself
wondering if it would be in the least possible for him to return to it.
No--no one ever did return. The bright boys, the restless boys, the boys
of energy, of ambition, of yearning for culture or conquest or the mere
sensation of living where it was really life--all went away, leaving
none but the Ezras behind. Some succeeded; some failed; but none of them
ever came back. And the Ezras who remained on the farms--they seemed to
shut and bolt the doors of their minds against all idea of making their
own lot less sterile and barren and uninviting.
The mere mental necessity for a great contrast brought up suddenly
in Reuben’s thoughts a picture of the drawing-room in the home of the
Minsters. It seemed as if the whole vast swing of the mind’s pendulum
separated that luxurious abode of cultured wealth from this dingy and
barren farmhouse room. And he, who had been born and reared in this
latter, now found himself at a loss how to spend so much as a single
evening in its environment, so completely had familiarity with the other
remoulded and changed his habits, his point of view, his very character.
Curious slaves of habit--creatures of their surroundings--men were!
A loud, peremptory knocking at the door aroused Reuben abruptly from his
revery, and Ezra, too, opened his eyes with a start, and sitting upright
rubbed them confusedly.
“Now I think of it, I heard a sleigh stop,” said Reuben, rising. “It
can’t be the doctor this time of night, can it?”
“It ’ud be jest like him,” commented Ezra, captiously. “He’s a great
hand to keep dropping in, sort of casual-like, when there’s sickness in
the house. It all goes down in his bill.”
The farmer brother had also risen, and now, lamp in hand, walked
heavily in his stocking feet to the door, and opened it half way. Some
indistinct words passed, and then, shading the flickering flame with his
huge hairy hand, Ezra turned his head.
“Somebody to see you, Rube,” he said. On second thought he added to the
visitor in a tone of formal politeness: “Won’t you step in, ma’am?”
Jessica Lawton almost pushed her host aside in her impulsive response to
his invitation. But when she had crossed the threshold the sudden change
into a heated atmosphere seemed to go to her brain like chloroform. She
stood silent, staring at Reuben, with parted lips and hands nervously
twitching. Even as he, in his complete surprise, recognized his visitor,
she trembled violently from head to foot, made a forward step, tottered,
and fell inertly into Ezra’s big, protecting arm.
“I guessed she was going to do it,” said the farmer, not dissembling his
pride at the alert way in which the strange woman had been caught, and
holding up the lamp with his other hand in triumph. “Hannah keeled over
in that same identical way when Suky run her finger through the cogs of
the wringing-machine, and I ketched her, too!”
Reuben had hurriedly come to his brother’s assistance. The two men
placed the fainting girl in the rocking-chair, and the lawyer began
with anxious fumbling to loosen the neck of her cloak and draw off her
gloves. Her fingers were like ice, and her brow, though it felt now
almost equally cold, was covered with perspiration. Reuben rubbed her
hands between his broad palms in a crudely informed belief that it was
the right thing to do, while Ezra rummaged in the adjoining pantry for
the household bottle of brandy.
Jessica came out of her swoon with the first touch of the pungent spirit
upon her whitened lips. She looked with weak blankness at the unfamiliar
scene about her, until her gaze fell upon the face of the lawyer. Then
she smiled faintly and closed her eyes again.
“She is an old friend of mine,” whispered Reuben to his brother, as he
pressed the brandy once more upon her. “She’ll come to in a minute. It
must be something serious that brought her out here.”
The girl languidly opened her eyes. “‘Cal’ Ged-ney’s asleep in the
sleigh,” she murmured. “You’d better bring him in. He’ll tell you.”
It was with an obvious effort that she said this much; and now, while
Ezra hastily pulled on his boots, her eyes closed again, and her
head sank with utter weariness sideways upon the high back of the
old-fashioned chair.
Reuben stood looking at her in pained anxiety--once or twice holding
the lamp close to her pale face, in dread of he knew not what--until
his brother returned. Ezra had brought the horses up into the yard, and
remained outside now to blanket them, while the old ’squire, benumbed
and drowsy, found his way into the house. It was evident enough to the
young lawyer’s first glance that Gedney had been drinking heavily.
“Well, what does this all mean?” he demanded, with vexed asperity.
“You’ve got to get on your things and race back with us, helly-to-hoot!”
said the ’squire. “Quick--there ain’t a minute to lose!” The old man
almost gasped in his eagerness.
“In Heaven’s name, what’s up? Have you been to Cadmus?”
“Yes, and got my pocket full of affidavits. We can send all three of
them to prison fast enough. But that’ll do to-morrow; for to-night
there’s a mob up at the Minster place. _Look there!_”
The old man had gone to the window and swept the stiff curtain aside. He
held it now with a trembling hand, so that Reuben could look out.
The whole southern sky overhanging Thessaly was crimson with the
reflection of a fire.
“Great God! it’s the rolling mill,” ejaculated Reuben, breathlessly.
“Quite as likely it’s the Minster house; it’s the same direction, only
farther off, and fires are deceptive,” said Gedney, his excitement
rising under the stimulus of the spectacle.
Reuben had kicked off his slippers, and was now dragging on his shoes.
“Tell me about it,” he said, working furiously at the laces.
’Squire Gedney helped himself generously to the brandy on the table as
he unfolded, in somewhat incoherent fashion, his narrative. The Lawton
girl had somehow found out that a hostile demonstration against the
Minsters was intended for the evening, and had started out to find
Tracy. By accident she had met him (Gedney), and they had come off in
the sleigh together. She had insisted upon driving, and as his long
journey from Cadmus had greatly fatigued him, he had got over into the
back seat and gone to sleep under the buffalo robes. He knew nothing
more until Ezra had roused him from his slumber in the sled, now at a
standstill on the road outside, and he had awakened to discover Jessica
gone, the horses wet and shivering in a cloud of steam, and the sky
behind them all ablaze.
“Jee-Whitaker! Looks as if the whole town was burning,” said Ezra,
coming in as this recital was concluded. “Them horses would a-got their
death out there in another ten minutes. Guess I’d better put ’em in
the barn, eh?”
“No, no! Just turn them around. I’ve got to drive them back faster than
they came,” said Reuben, who had on his overcoat and hat. “Hurry, and
get me some thick gloves to drive in. I’ll leave my things here. We
won’t wake mother up. I’ll get you to run in to-morrow, if you will, and
let me know how she is. Tell her I _had_ to go.”
When Ezra had found the gloves and brought them, the two men for the
first time bent an instinctive joint glance at the recumbent figure of
the girl in the rocking-chair.
“I’ll get Hannah up,” said the farmer, “and she can have your room. I
guess she’s too sick to try to go back with you. If she’s well enough,
I’ll bring her in in the morning. I was going to take in some apples,
anyway.”
To their surprise Jessica opened her eyes and even lifted her head at
these words.
“No,” she said; “I feel better now--much better. I must go back with Mr.
Tracy. I really must.” She rose to her feet as she spoke, and, though
she was conscious of great dizziness and languor, succeeded by her smile
in imposing upon her unskilled companions. Perhaps if Hannah had been
“got up” she would have seen through the weak pretence of strength, and
insisted on having matters ordered otherwise. But the men offered no
dissent. Jessica was persuaded to drink another glass of brandy, and
’Squire Gedney took one without being specially urged; and then Reuben
impatiently led the way out to the sleigh, which Ezra had turned around.
“No; I’d rather be in front with you,” the girl said, when Reuben had
spread the robes for her to sit in the back seat. “Let the Judge sit
there; he wants to sleep. I’m not tired now, and I want to keep awake.”
Thus it was arranged, and Reuben, with a strong hand on the tight reins,
started the horses on their homeward rush toward the flaming horizon.