ABRAM HAS A THEORY
The Arabian mare’s long cry reached Liza’s ear, also. She was putting
her chickens in the basket, and having covered them, went toward the
bars.
“There’s something wrong, the way that horse whinnies,” said Liza
aloud. “Why, look at her now! He’s been thrown!”
Ballie was walking from one end of the bars to the other, resenting the
saddle and dangling saddle-bags, resenting the bridle which hung to her
feet, but more than all distressed by the absence of her master. As
soon as she saw Liza she uttered another interrogative wailing cry.
A pair of small stockings hung across the fence: Bluebell’s figure was
flying down the lane at the foot of the pine hill.
“O my gracious!” cried Liza, smiting her hands. “Now _she’ll_ go off
and get killed. Come back, Bluebell! come back here! She runs right on
and doesn’t hear me!”
Ballie heard intelligently, and jerked her bridle from under foot,
seeming, as she did so, to fling a wail after Bluebell.
Liza got over the bars and mechanically relieved the mare, unfastening
the pill-bags and saddle, and turning the bridle back over her neck.
Leaving her tied to the post, Liza flung her apron over her head and
started running towards Abram’s house. It was a mile to Abram’s. When
she had passed the orchard and was nearly across the east meadow, she
remembered Miss Calder had been left with only Rocco in the house,
unconscious of what had happened. Still running, Liza dipped into a
gulch-like hollow which divided the stony meadow in halves. It was oozy
and slippery, and she climbed the other side nearly out of breath.
Abram’s house appeared beyond its orchard.
When Liza had scaled the orchard fence, and recovering breath a little,
came running towards the front of the house, she found Abram and his
wife talking with a man in the road.
Bounce, the house-dog, had barked all the way up the orchard, but they
had never turned their heads.
“Oh, Abram!” she cried. At this Abram looked around, and showed a face
as distressed as her own.
“We’ve just heard the doctor’s been drowned,” said Samantha solemnly.
Liza was not prepared for this statement. Her burning face bleached.
“Who says so?” she exclaimed aggressively.
“The g’ography-teacher and him both tried to cross the Rocky Fork at
the ford, and his horse acted up some way and got him off.”
Liza groaned.
“I don’t believe it,” she said next: “why didn’t you help him?”
The geography-teacher was splashed and muddied from head to foot. His
face looked haggard, and on Pancost’s tall gray horse he appeared
singularly gruesome. Liza despised him at first sight. She longed to
pull him from his uncertain seat, and have him punished for this
trouble for which she unreasonably held him accountable.
“I couldn’t help him, ma’am. I just escaped with my own life, and rode
as hard as I could to the first house I saw, to give the alarm.”
“There’s four houses between this and the ford! His horse just came to
the bars! Abram! Why don’t you stir yourself? Go and help him! He isn’t
drowned, I know. Why, he can swim like a fish! If you’d only stopped to
be of some account!” she cried, flashing her excited eyes up and down
the geography-teacher.
“Liza,” said Abram, “I’m startin’ to the stable for a horse. But you
hain’t heard the particulars.”
He cantered away, and Samantha, who had gone into the house, came out
with a camphor-bottle. She bathed Liza’s face, while that good spinster
held to the fence and denounced Mr. Runnels.
“Where’s your particulars, now? If you’d stood by him like a man, as
he ’a’ stood by you! Where is he? What did he do after he got into the
water?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” said Mr. Runnels,
avoiding her eyes, and speaking in a dejected way without heat. “His
horse got to plunging and the saddle slipped. The current was so strong
we were both carried away below the ford, and when I got out, his horse
had kicked him loose.”
“Ballie kick _him_! She never kicked him!”
“I can’t help that. She was climbing the bank and a heavy log hit him
and he went under. I called for help, but nobody came. Then I put my
horse to a gallop and rode as hard as I could to the first house I saw.”
“Sit down, Liza,” begged Samantha, pushing her upon a stool they used
in picking fruit. Liza sat down. “There goes Abram to the ford fast
as he can go. And if he don’t find anything he’ll warn out all the
neighbors. Don’t take on so!” sobbed Samantha in her own apron.
Mr. Runnels turned his horse and followed Abram. Dripping and wretched
and in need of hospitality as he certainly was, it had not occurred to
either of the women to offer him anything. He faded from their view
merely as the bearer of bad tidings.
But a capable woman like Liza could give up to smelling camphor for a
moment only. Within half an hour she had created a revolution in her
own house. The sitting-room was turned into a hospital ward, with every
appliance for restoring wounded or half-drowned people. A fire made the
black chimney-piece sparkle. Miss Melissa followed her around, awed
and colorless, but anxious to help. She did marvels of lifting and
carrying, scarcely knowing it. A chill struck through the air as the
day closed. Only the baby, who sat in the big rocker with Georgiana
and the soles of her own feet broadside to the fire, could sing with
any enjoyment of life. The unusual bustle and the climbing fire seemed
things of good cheer. Unconscious of any trouble and feeling in a
musical mood, Rocco improvised recitative, crescendo and diminuendo,
knitting her fine eyebrows with an artist’s concentration.
“O--my--GOOD--GWacious! Jawgeanno!--I neva’ turn back any mo’. An’ it
WAINED: AND Juicy-crucy-fied ’im. Cap in my father’s HAN’! An’ the’
was a little guyl had a nice dolly b’ronged to her sisser B’uebell. O
Jawge-ANNO!”
Liza-Robert came tiptoeing in on her heavy shoe-soles. She had got
the news some way, and going nearly a mile up the run, found a narrow
place where she could get across by the aid of rails and so reach the
troubled house. She had been crying on the way, and when she saw Rocco
toasting her soles with such musical satisfaction, the poor woman
buried her face in her apron.
“Poor little innocent!” she said, passing her hand down Rocco’s head;
“poor little innocent!”
Rocco was accustomed to Liza-Robert’s widowed expression, and laughed
up in her face.
“Dreat big doll,” she said importantly, turning Georgiana for
inspection.
Then, as if a peg had slipped in the music-box of her little chest, she
straightway struck off again:
“On Missus--JORDAN STORMY Banks’s house, I cast a Rishful EYE!”
Miss Melissa came in from the banistered porch where she had been
watching, and Liza from the kitchen.
“Did you see or hear anything?” inquired Liza. Her plump,
well-preserved face looked shrunken.
“Nothing,” replied Miss Melissa, spreading her transparent, trembling
hands to the fire.
“I’ll make you acquainted with my cousin’s widow, Miss Calder,” said
Liza.
Miss Calder bowed to the raw-boned, sad woman. Liza-Robert inclined her
head.
“How do ye do, ma’am?” Then she wiped off a rolling tear with her
apron. There was a natural majesty in her which fully appreciated
culture and delicacy in another; but now she met this lady without a
thought of the difference between them.
“He stayed by me night and day when I had the lung fever, and the other
doctors give me up to die. If it hadn’t been for him I wonder who’d be
carin’ for my children now! I’m just a hard-workin’ woman that’s had
trouble, but he always was as good as an angel to me and mine.”
Liza went to the door; then to the bars. The day was gone: she was
startled to find it so near twilight.
Presently she came back with an heroic air, patted the prepared bed
and laid it open, turned a stick on the fire-dogs over, and hurriedly
brought in a candle.
“I thought I heard some one comin’,” she said.
It seemed to be the tramping of another horse at the bars. Ballie,
still tied to the ignominious post, neighed to it interrogatively.
Abram came striding in.
“Where is he?” said Liza.
Abram looked at the three women piteously.
“I don’t know. We ain’t found him.”
“Who’s lookin’?” cried Liza with a sharp tone.
“All on this side the Fork. The men goin’ home from the Furnace all
turned in.”
“I thought mebby ’twas only that curly-headed g’ography-teacher,” said
Liza. She burst out sobbing in her apron again. Miss Calder sat down.
Rocco was frightened, and got down with Georgiana hanging across her
shoulder, to stare at Abram.
“We did get his hat,” said Abram, swallowing as if his very prominent
Adam’s apple were choking him. “And I have a kind of a theory now.”
He proceeded, without much encouragement, to explain his theory:
“Mr. Runnels says a log hit him and he went down right by the ford.
They’re gettin’ Ridenour’s canoe and ’ll drag over that spot. But I hev
a kind of theory--I don’t know whether I’m right or not--”
The three women lifted their heads expectantly.
“My theory is, it didn’t stop there.”
The pronoun sent a shudder through his hearers.
“It’s down below the Narrows, and I’m goin’ to Mary Ann and warn out
the men for a search there.”
At this hopeless view of the case, Liza walked the floor in a transport
of grief, and Liza-Robert tried to repress her own sorrow and attend
to Miss Calder, who seemed fainting.
“Oh, the poor boy! And him so noble-hearted! Night after night, day
after day, through rain and shine and cold and heat he’s rode! And it
made no difference whether it was to the rich or the poor! They was all
alike to him if they needed doctrin’--and he never expected to get pay
for half he done!”
Here Rocco raised her voice and howled.
“He was good to me,” said Abram. “I never knowed a man I thought more
of.”
“Honey,” said Liza, coming to the baby, and trying to control herself,
“Liza’ll put you to bed now.”
“I don’t want to go,” howled Rocco. “I want B’uebell to sit in the
chair and wock me.”
Liza flashed a glance all around the room. Then a recollection ran over
her face leaving it more faded.
“Oh, didn’t that child come back? She ran down the lane to hunt him.
Abram, where’s Bluebell?”