Allston blew out the big lamp on the table and sank down in a chair
before the open fire. He was tired neither physically nor mentally. And
yet in some ways he was glad to be alone. For the last few hours he had
been under a nervous strain in Wilmer’s presence. He was like a man in
a closed room with many doors trying to feel his way out through one
opening and then another, discovering that some of the doors gave a
little way and others not at all, in the end to be left exactly where
he started. Further, to complicate matters, that thin voice in the dark
outside still called to him. He heard it even now above the rustling
and creaking and eerie moan of a rising wind beating against the house,
presage of a storm.
It was extraordinary to him that such a situation could have developed
out of such innocuous material. The whole adventure had begun so lazily
and drowsily! Half asleep at the wheel of his wheezy gray runabout he
had been keeping to twenty miles an hour over a country road that
seemed as though it might end at any time in primeval forest. It was
just the setting he had sought for that complete relaxation which was
to allow his mind, muddied by two years of war, to settle into the
placid pool it always had been. So it had seemed about to do when Roxie
Kester appeared in the road and forced his head-on collision with a
chestnut-oak. But that seemed merely like a temporary interruption. The
kindness of the Howes offered him just as good an opportunity to bask
in the sun as did the open road. This was a golden land dripping with
milk and honey where a man need not keep his eyes more than half open.
It was a country of blue sky and birds and shocked wheat and flowers
and people at their ease.
It still was. If he could only get hold of that idea and keep it, he
might find that the present crisis which appeared so acute was merely
a morbid mental condition unwarranted by fact. He was only a guest in
passing. He had distorted his values. This was only a bypath incident
not to be taken too seriously. The main road of his life lay in another
direction, though where only the Lord knew. Somehow it must be related
to the past he had already lived, and must develope out of those
surroundings with which he was already familiar.
Yet it was not easy to think of any future which should eliminate this
girl who had just left him. He had known women twenty years, neighbors
at home, whom he could banish with less difficulty. He had seen them
with his eyes alone. He had never made them part of his thoughts--of
his deeper thoughts. And they had never made him question himself. Nor
had they ever made him feel.
It was at this point that he found himself most baffled in his
relations with Wilmer. She made him think, but she parried every
thought. She made him feel, but she checked every expression of that
emotion. There were moments when he felt he could break through that
reserve, but he never quite dared to try after his one attempt. Then,
too, he was held in check by the conditions under which he was a guest
here. Unvouched for, he was under even deeper obligations to his host
than one accepted under the conventions. He was in honor bound not to
violate the trust imposed upon him. He could advance no farther than
he was asked. And Wilmer was not always easy to interpret.
To-night he was more bewildered by her than ever. The net result of
this evening had been to increase the tension between them while
leaving everything at loose ends. He could not fairly blame her alone
for that, however, while he was ragged in his own thinking. It began
to look as though this clarifying process which had appeared so
simple during the first few days of his flight from home was becoming
decidedly complicated. If he had succeeded in clearing his mind of one
kind of jumble, that of troop trains and transports, and the braggart
tyranny of superior officers, it was only to fill it with another kind
dominated by quite as autocratic a type of tyranny. It seemed that a
woman’s eyes could, in their way, bully as effectively as any uniformed
overlord with his jingling spurs.
Allston began to pace the floor again. The wind was increasing in
volume and driving scattered raindrops against the windows with the
velocity of bullets. An occasional flash of lightning cut a blazing
path through the dark like star shells, though the light was not held.
And from a distance, beyond the mountains, he heard the low rumble of
thunder so like the heavy guns that used to growl through the night
over Flanders that at moments it was difficult for him not to believe
he was back there again. This might have been one of those deserted
houses in that old French town in which he had been billeted except
that it lacked the marks of age. But it is the mood that counts in a
picture; not the details. The Huns were attacking over Green Mountain
and he was here to do his little part to drive them back. Barbarism was
in a new clash with civilization. He felt this so keenly that his hand
as another star shell burst went back to his automatic. And then came
the voice again.
This time it was more individualized. It sounded like the voice of
Roxie Kester. That was absurd, of course, but the notion gave him a
start. The girl had acted strangely when she came back to the kitchen
from across the fields. It was queer that she had been out there at all
except that young women were subject to odd spells of that sort. He had
not been satisfied when he left her and might have been considerably
worried had not other matters come in to occupy his attention.
Allston tiptoed through the kitchen and outdoors to see if her light
was burning. Her window was dark. The wind whipped his face and drove
him in. Still he was not satisfied. Action whetted his fears. It became
necessary now, if he hoped to get any rest, to allay his anxiety once
for all. Striking a match he made his way up the stairs to the door of
Roxie’s room. It was closed, but he listened there for sound of her
breathing. He heard nothing, but that proved nothing. Reluctantly and
not at all sure of the explanation of his action he could give if she
did answer, he knocked. He received no reply and knocked again--louder
this time. But even so he was held back by his dread of rousing the
rest of the household. It would be easier, should his alarm prove
groundless, to explain his conduct to Roxie than to either Howe or
Wilmer.
The continued silence became ominous and oppressive. He was finding it
difficult to breathe as though the hall were being exhausted of air.
Cautiously he turned the handle and pushed. The door opened, but the
room was in utter darkness.
He whispered her name:
“Roxie.”
Then:
“Are you there, Roxie?”
Silence now gave him a direct answer. He struck a match and held it
above his head. The bureau drawers were open and one shoe stood in the
middle of the room. The white bed was empty and undisturbed. On the
table he saw a lamp and lighted this. Then he caught sight of the note
on the pillow. The fact it was addressed to him was significant. Under
ordinary circumstances she would have written to Wilmer. As he read,
every word justified his suspicions. But at the sentence, “Please don’t
hunt for me,” he saw as clear as daylight the hand of Bud Childers in
the affair.
The note dropped from Allston’s nervous fingers to the floor. He did
not pick it up. He knew every word by heart. For two hours she had been
calling to him and he had not answered.
But why, if in danger, had she not called upon him when he sought her
after dinner and offered his aid? The note answered that. She was
trying to protect him. In some way, by some ruse, Bud had bullied her
into following him and she had deliberately sacrificed her one chance
of escape. The inevitable deduction swept Allston back to that night
at the bend in the road when she stood before him with her head tilted
back and her eyes closed. In her white dress silvered with moonlight
she had made a romantic figure. She was like some gentle creature sung
of in idyls. A man might well pray to be saved from such a temptation
as she offered him then. He had not been insensible, though, thank God,
he had held steady. It had for him been but a passing moment, but for
her it had meant more. He saw it now--fool that he had been. He saw it
now when it was possibly too late.
There was one chance in a hundred that Roxie had gone home. After that
the chances were a hundred to one that she had gone with Bud Childers.
It was now ten o’clock. Within two hours he would know.
Allston had not been so coolly sure of himself since he stepped out of
uniform. His face hardened and something of that merciless tint of blue
steel took the place in his eyes of their natural color. His thoughts
clicked into place like cartridges in a machine gun. All the qualities
that military discipline had trained into him reasserted themselves
with automatic precision. He moved quickly and without hesitancy.
Crossing the room he extinguished the lamp and came out, closing the
door behind him. There was no need of rousing the others. They had much
better sleep on. He meant to have the girl back here before morning,
and in that case there was no reason why they should ever be disturbed
by knowledge of the episode.
He came downstairs and went to his room for a coat and hat. Here
he stopped to examine his revolver and to slip into his pocket the
remainder of his cartridges. He found about a dozen. He closed his
own door, returned to the sitting-room to make sure the fire was safe
there, and hurried out.
It was pitch dark--inky dark. The wind was still blowing and the rain
increasing in volume. He bent against it as he took the road to Roxie’s
house he had followed before. It was pitiful that he should be obliged
to waste the time necessary to eliminate that faint possibility, but
it was essential. Before he ventured to force himself into Childers’s
shack he must be certain of his facts. That was too grim a business to
undertake except upon firm ground.
His progress was slow and labored. The road was rough, and he
frequently found himself out of it and floundering among the bushes.
Always there was the temptation to quicken his pace and always he
resisted that. He must take no chances of spraining an ankle. And he
must keep plenty of strength in reserve. He had seen too much of the
reckless folly of advancing to a point farther than support warranted.
He had watched whole regiments wiped out as they occupied their forward
positions with spent strength, the helpless victims of fresh attacking
troops. He must not be exhausted when he finally reached the home of
Bud Childers.
Not that he anticipated any such weakness. He had learned that, given
the occasion, one’s resources are well-nigh inexhaustible. Again and
again in France he had found himself just beginning to draw on his
strength at the point where in civil life he would have been ready to
quit. And never had he been dominated by so inflexible a will as now.
Duty and patriotism will carry a man far, but such a call as this which
now urged him on will carry a man even farther. Here was Duty linked,
not with an abstract idea, but with the most concrete appeal a man can
know--that of a woman in need of his strength.
As Allston fought his way on, as he pitted his might against the
obstacles in his path, Roxie became still more clearly outlined. He
thought of her less as a child. This startled him at first. It left him
uneasy. It was better, in some ways, to think of her as a child.
But this thing she had done for him--if his deductions were
correct--was the act of a woman. And such a woman! Unreasonable and
unwarranted it was! Unjustified and uncalled-for it was! But also it
was magnificent!
This much Allston appreciated and responded to with a thrill. And yet
even so he had not begun to plumb the depths of her intense little
being. He interpreted her act as one of heroic self-sacrifice based
upon an exaggerated sense of gratitude for the protection he had given
her. That was enough, God knows, to spur him on, but it left out, too,
so much--so much.
The windows of the Kester house were dark when he reached there. That
told him nothing. He pounded at the door without response and that told
him more. Roxie would not have been as difficult as this to rouse.
With his worst fears revived, he kicked at the wooden panels as the
rain beat down upon him. The passing minutes were becoming of more and
more value. He tried the latch and shook it impatiently when he heard
shuffling footsteps within. A voice called to him--the voice of an old
and timid woman.
“Who’s thet?” she demanded.
He answered with a question.
“Is Roxie there?”
“Roxie hyar? No, Roxie ain’t hyar. She’s up to Miss Wilmer’s. Who be
you-all?”
Allston had already taken a step back. The wind tore his reply to
shreds. He must make the mountain road now as fast as the night would
let him--remembering always to keep plenty of strength in reserve.
One thing helped him; the afternoon he had returned from that little
cove on the mountain-side Howe had questioned him as to where he had
been. As he told, Howe clapped a hand upon his shoulder.
“Big Laurel is up there. Keep away,” he warned.
“Why?”
“You must have been within a few hundred yards of Childers’s shack.”
It was not that fact which left so vivid an impression in Allston’s
mind, but what he had thought while walking by the side of Wilmer. He
was glad enough now, however, that it served to place him. He could
have returned to that cove with his eyes shut.
Against a background of storm-rent clouds and the formidable bulk of
mountains and a sea of tossing trees, a man is but a tiny object. With
the night and the winds and the beating rain against him, it would
seem that he would count for no more than a dead leaf. And yet ever
since man was man and not merely some grubbing insect, the elements
have spent their fury against him in vain. Again and again on the
ocean and on the desert, in the frozen North and the tropic South, on
mountain-top and plain, man has faced their worst and often enough
survived. If at times he is pitifully easy to kill, at other times he
is unconquerable.
Yard by yard Allston fought his way along the mountain road that
follows the slope of the hills and past the Lutheran church which gave
him his bearings. With the creek on his right he stumbled through a
heavy growth of hemlocks, passing several shacks in darkness. Each time
he mastered the temptation to rouse the occupants and inquire his way.
To do this would be possibly to reveal his business--would inevitably
reveal his presence in the neighborhood--and that seemed unwise. These
people were certain to be more friendly to Bud than to himself. In the
end he might be obliged to take that risk, but he knew that Bud’s shack
opened somewhere from this road into a clearing, and he felt sure that
however late the hour he would find it lighted. If he knew Roxie there
would be little sleep for Bud that night. Whatever club the bully held
over her head to make her follow would not be effective enough to cow
her utterly. If left alone Bud might win in the end, but he would have
a fight on his hands that could not be settled in a few hours.
That was a fair argument, and yet with every passing minute Allston
felt the strain of the delay. She might not be conquered, but she
must be suffering. And for every second of pain he was responsible.
Unwittingly she had placed him in a position where this could not be
otherwise.
So for another ten minutes he floundered on, and then, to the right and
ahead, he caught through the trees--flashing on and off as the waving
branches passed before it--a yellow gleam. He pressed on faster and
nearer. A sharp turn brought him to the log which crossed the creek to
the clearing before the shack. Cautiously he moved over this. The light
from the uncurtained window did not carry far and the rain dripping
down the panes obscured his sight of the room within. He paused now, a
little out of breath. It was not easy to wait when so near, but this
was no easy task he had before him. A single careless move might end
for all time his usefulness.
He had once read somewhere that there is no such thing as an accident;
that every mishap can be traced directly to some one’s mistake. He had
always remembered that. It had served him in good stead in the war. It
helped him to a cool judgment that cut down his own mistakes.
When he moved a few steps nearer the window, he was in complete command
of himself. The driving rain was to his advantage. It made it easier
to look in than to look out. With his automatic in his hand he crept
to within a few feet of the shack, and standing a little to one side
of the window peered in. What he saw made it very difficult for him to
breathe normally.