A PROMISE.
Clasping thin, nervous fingers, Zyp looked up in my face fearfully.
“Have you seen Jason?”
“No. Has he come, too?”
“He’s gone on before to the mill to seek you.”
“God help him! I’ve been out all day. Is it the old trouble, Zyp?”
“Oh, Renny, I despair at last! I fought it while I was strong; but
now--now.”
Her head sunk and she pressed a hand to her bosom again.
“What ails you, dear? Zyp, are you ill?”
“I don’t know. Something seems to suck at my veins. I have nothing
definite. The wretchedness of life is sapping my strength, I suppose.”
“Is it still so wretched? I am always here to give you what help I
can.”
“Oh, I know! And we must always be cursing your quiet with our
entreaties.”
“Zyp, you needn’t talk like that. My heart is open to my little
sister. And is this my bonny niece?”
She was a slender mite of four or thereabouts, with a delicate thin
face, oval like a blushing rose petal, and a quaint, solemn manner of
movement and broken speech.
“Give me a kiss, mouse. Oh, what a prim little peck!”
A faint smile came to the mother’s lips. “You’ll learn to love your
uncle, Renna.”
“Did you name her after me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I call her Renna for short. Her real name’s
Zyp.”
I laughed over the queer deduction; then sighed.
“Will you love me?” I said to the little girl, but she was too shy to
answer.
I stroked her shining head and poke over it to Zyp.
“Tell me all about it, dear,” said I.
“It’s nothing, but the old miserable story--pursuit and flight; and
with each new movement some little means of living abandoned.”
Looking at this pale, injured woman, a fierce deep resentment flared
up in my heart against the inexorable tyranny of the fiend who would
not learn mercy. I had too long stood aside; too long remained neutral
in an unnatural warfare, the most innocent victim of which was she
whose image my soul professed to hold inviolate. Old ties bound me no
longer. Her champion would I be in life and death, meeting stealth
with secrecy, pursuit with ambush.
I put the child from me and rose hurriedly to my feet.
“Zyp!” I cried, “this must end! Forgive me that, holding you in my
heart as I have always done, I have not been more active in your
succor. Here all doubt ends. I devote myself body and soul to your
help and welfare!”
Crying softly, she drew her little one to her and wound her arms about
her. Now the last of her weird nature seemed broken and gone, and she
was woman only, helpless and alone.
“Renny, Renny,” she sobbed, “why didn’t you sooner? Oh, Renny! Why
didn’t you sooner?”
Her anguish--her implied reproach--pierced to my soul.
“Has that been in your mind, Zyp? I never thought--it was always a
habit with me to yield the lead to Jason, and you were so strong and
independent.”
“Not now for long--a haunted, hunted thing! But I had no right--and
then, your father.”
“If I thought I had sacrificed your interests to a mistaken sense of
duty to him--ah, Zyp, it would be a very bitter thing.”
“No, no! You’ve always been strong and good and generous. Don’t mind
what I say. I’m only desperate with trouble. Hush, little rabbit!
Mother cries with joy to have found a friend.”
“Need you have sought long? Every word you say seems a reproach.”
“No, no, no; you’ll misread me and fall away from us at the last.”
“I swear not! Tell me what has happened.”
“We thought we had escaped him--perhaps that he was dead. There was a
long respite; then one night--four, five days ago--he was there. Some
place where they gamble with cards--and he accused my husband of
cheating. There was a terrible scene. Jason came home all smeared with
blood, but it was the old terror that made us despair. Why are such
things allowed on earth? It seemed all leaf and flowers and sky to me
once. How long ago! He stood outside our lodgings the next morning.
His dreadful face was like a devil’s. Then we knew we must go. When
the bill was paid we had only a few shillings left. In our sickness we
turned to you, and we set off tramping, tramping down to Winton by
easy stages. Jason carried the child; my arms were too weak.”
“And he--that other?”
“He’s sure to follow us, but he won’t know we’ve walked.”
I remembered the figure on the bridge four nights ago, and was silent.
“Renalt, what can we do?”
“Jason has gone to me for money, I suppose?”
“Oh, if you could only let us have a little; we might escape abroad
again and bury ourselves in some faraway spot, where he could never
find us.”
“Zyp, listen to me. My father died last night.”
“Died? The old man! Oh, Renny, Renny!”
“He had been long ailing. I have been wandering all day to try to
restore my shattered nerves. That is why I have not met Jason.”
“Dead! The old, poor man! And you are alone?”
“Yes, Zyp.”
She broke down and wept long and sadly.
“He was good to me,” she moaned, “and I requited his kindness ill. And
now I come to worry you in your unhappiness.”
“You came to lighten it with a glimpse of the old sweet nature--you
and your pretty baby here.”
“Do you think her pretty, Renny? He would have been fond of her, and
he’s gone. What a world of death and misery!”
“Now the mill is no place for you at present. Old Peggy is dead, too,
and gone to her judgment. In a few days the house will be quit of
mourning. Then you must all three come and live with me there, and
we’ll make out life in company.”
She sat clasping her little girl and staring at me, her lips parted,
as she listened breathlessly.
“That would be good,” she whispered. “Do you hear, baby? Mumby and
Renna will lie down at last and go to sleep.”
The child pressed her cheek to her mother’s and put her short arms
about her neck with a sympathetic sigh. Her lot, I think, had been no
base contrast with that of children better circumstanced. She was
dressed even now as if from the fairy queen’s wardrobe, though Zyp’s
poor clothes were stained and patched in a dozen places.
Then my love--oh, may I not call her so now?--looked up at me
sorrowfully over the brink of her short ecstasy.
“Dear Renny,” she said, “how can it ever be as you say? Rest can never
come to us while he lives.”
“I have sworn, Zyp. I am confident and strong to grapple with this
tragic Furioso. If he persists after one more warning we’ll set the
law on him for a wandering lunatic.”
“That I believe he is--oh!” she closed her eyes as if in an ineffable
dream of peace and security.
“The question is, what are you to do in the meantime?”
“That’s soon settled. We came over Micheldever, only a few miles away.
We’ll go back there and hire a single room in the village--I saw one
to let that would suit us--and wait till you send for us.”
“Very well. And what do you say to taking little Zyp back by yourself
and leaving Jason here under my wing?”
“If you think it best.”
“I must make certain arrangements with him. Yes, I think that will be
best.” I spoke cheerfully and buoyantly, anxious to quicken and
sustain her new-born hope. Uneasy forebodings, nevertheless, drove me
to make the proposition. I could not free my mind of the thought that
Duke yet hung secretly about the place, induced to wait and watch on
that sure instinct that had never yet in the long run failed to
interpret to him the movements of his victims.
Therefore I felt it safer to keep my brother for the present under
friendly lock and key rather than risk a further exposing of him to
the malignant observation of his enemy.
“Zyp, take this money. I wish it were more, but it will keep you going
for the present.”
“No, Renny, I have a little left.”
“Don’t worry me, changeling.”
“Ah, the name and the flowers.” She rose to her feet. “Have you
forgotten my asking you never to pick one?”
“Not once in my life since, Zyp. My conscience is free of that
reproach.”
She looked at me with a sweet strange expression in her wet eyes.
“Good-by, dear brother,” she said, suddenly, holding out her hand to
me.
“Shall I not see you off?”
“No. We shan’t have long to wait, I dare say, and Jason will be
wishing for you. Kiss--Renny, kiss dad for me--this kiss”--and she
stepped hurriedly forward and put her soft trembling lips to my
forehead.
My blood leaped. For a moment I was near catching her madly in my
arms.
“Good-by!” I cried, swerving back. “Good-by, little Zyp!”
They moved from me a few paces. Out in the road the wind caught the
woman’s skirts and flung her dark hair abroad. Suddenly she turned and
came back to me.
“Renny,” she said, in low, heartrending tones, “it looks so happy and
golden, but the fierce air talked in my lungs as I went. Oh,
promise--promise--promise!”
“Anything, Zyp, in the wide world.”
“To care for my little one--my darling, if I’m called away.”
“Before God I swear to devote my life to her.”
She looked at me a long moment, with a piercing gaze, gave a hoarse,
low sob, and catching at her child’s hand hurried away with her down
the road. I watched their going till their shapes grew dim in the
stormy dusk; then twisted about and strode my own way homeward.
Heaven help me! It was my last vision of her who, through all the
hounding of fate, had made my life “a perfumed altar-flame.”
Before I reached the mill the rain swept down once more, wrapping the
gabled city in high spectral gloom. Not dust to dust, it seemed, was
our lot to be in common with the sons of men, but rather the
fearfuller ruin of those whose names are “writ in water.”
So fiercely drove the onset of flying deluge that scarcely might I
force headway against its icy battalions. Dark was falling when at
last I reached the mill, and all conflicting emotions I might have
felt on approaching it were numbed by reason of the mere physical
effort of pressing forward. Therefore it was that hastening down the
yard, my eyes were blind to neighboring impressions, otherwise some
unaccustomed shape crouching in the shelter of its blackness would
have induced me to a pause.
As it was, I fell, rather than beat, against the door, and then drew
myself back to gather breath. Almost immediately a step sounded coming
down the passage beyond, the door was pulled inward, and I saw the
figure of Jason standing in the opening.
“Ah!” I gasped, and was about to step in, when he gave a sickly
screech and his hands went up, as if in terror to ward off a blow.
I felt a breath at my ear and turned quickly round--and there was the
white face of Duke almost looking over my shoulder!