IV

The first week of her visit passed in a whirl. She had her

promised toboggan-ride at the back of an automobile through a

chill January twilight. Swathed in furs she put in a morning

tobogganing on the country-club hill; even tried skiing, to sail

through the air for a glorious moment and then land in a tangled

laughing bundle on a soft snow-drift. She liked all the winter

sports, except an afternoon spent snow-shoeing over a glaring

plain under pale yellow sunshine, but she soon realized that

these things were for children--that she was being humored and

that the enjoyment round her was only a reflection of her own.

At first the Bellamy family puzzled her. The men were reliable

and she liked them; to Mr. Bellamy especially, with his iron-gray

hair and energetic dignity, she took an immediate fancy, once

she found that he was born in Kentucky; this made of him a link

between the old life and the new. But toward the women she felt a

definite hostility. Myra, her future sister-in-law, seemed the

essence of spiritless conversationality. Her conversation was so

utterly devoid of personality that Sally Carrol, who came from a

country where a certain amount of charm and assurance could be

taken for granted in the women, was inclined to despise her.

"If those women aren't beautiful," she thought, "they're nothing.

They just fade out when you look at them. They're glorified

domestics. Men are the centre of every mixed group."

Lastly there was Mrs. Bellamy, whom Sally Carrol detested. The

first day's impression of an egg had been confirmed--an egg with

a cracked, veiny voice and such an ungracious dumpiness of

carriage that Sally Carrol felt that if she once fell she would

surely scramble. In addition, Mrs. Bellamy seemed to typify the

town in being innately hostile to strangers. She called Sally

Carrol "Sally," and could not be persuaded that the double name

was anything more than a tedious ridiculous nickname. To Sally

Carrol this shortening of her name was presenting her to the

public half clothed. She loved "Sally Carrol"; she loathed

"Sally." She knew also that Harry's mother disapproved of her

bobbed hair; and she had never dared smoke down-stairs after that

first day when Mrs. Bellamy had come into the library sniffing

violently.

Of all the men she met she preferred Roger Patton, who was a

frequent visitor at the house. He never again alluded to the

Ibsenesque tendency of the populace, but when he came in one day

and found her curled upon the sofa bent over "Peer Gynt" he

laughed and told her to forget what he'd said--that it was all

rot.

They had been walking homeward between mounds of high-piled snow

and under a sun which Sally Carrol scarcely recognized. They

passed a little girl done up in gray wool until she resembled a

small Teddy bear, and Sally Carrol could not resist a gasp of

maternal appreciation.

"Look! Harry!"

"What?"

"That little girl--did you see her face?"

"Yes, why?"

"It was red as a little strawberry. Oh, she was cute!"

"Why, your own face is almost as red as that already! Everybody's

healthy here. We're out in the cold as soon as we're old enough

to walk. Wonderful climate!"

She looked at him and had to agree. He was mighty

healthy-looking; so was his brother. And she had noticed the new

red in her own cheeks that very morning.

Suddenly their glances were caught and held, and they stared for

a moment at the street-corner ahead of them. A man was standing

there, his knees bent, his eyes gazing upward with a tense

expression as though he were about to make a leap toward the

chilly sky. And then they both exploded into a shout of

laughter, for coming closer they discovered it had been a

ludicrous momentary illusion produced by the extreme bagginess of

the man's trousers.

"Reckon that's one on us," she laughed.

"He must be Southerner, judging by those trousers," suggested

Harry mischievously.

"Why, Harry!"

Her surprised look must have irritated him.

"Those damn Southerners!"

Sally Carrol's eyes flashed.

"Don't call 'em that."

"I'm sorry, dear," said Harry, malignantly apologetic, "but you

know what I think of them. They're sort of--sort of

degenerates--not at all like the old Southerners. They've lived

so long down there with all the colored people that they've

gotten lazy and shiftless."

"Hush your mouth, Harry!" she cried angrily. "They're not! They

may be lazy--anybody would be in that climate--but they're my

best friends, an' I don't want to hear 'em criticised in any such

sweepin' way. Some of 'em are the finest men in the world."

"Oh, I know. They're all right when they come North to college,

but of all the hangdog, ill-dressed, slovenly lot I ever saw, a

bunch of small-town Southerners are the worst!"

Sally Carrol was clinching her gloved hands and biting her lip

furiously.

"Why," continued Harry, "if there was one in my class at New

Haven, and we all thought that at last we'd found the true type

of Southern aristocrat, but it turned out that he wasn't an

aristocrat at all--just the son of a Northern carpetbagger, who

owned about all the cotton round Mobile."

"A Southerner wouldn't talk the way you're talking now," she said

evenly.

"They haven't the energy!"

"Or the somethin' else."

"I'm sorry Sally Carrol, but I've heard you say yourself that

you'd never marry---"

"That's quite different. I told you I wouldn't want to tie my

life to any of the boys that are round Tarleton now, but I never

made any sweepin' generalities."

They walked along in silence.

"I probably spread it on a bit thick Sally Carrol. I'm sorry."

She nodded but made no answer. Five minutes later as they stood

in the hallway she suddenly threw her arms round him.

"Oh, Harry," she cried, her eyes brimming with tears; "let's get

married next week. I'm afraid of having fusses like that. I'm

afraid, Harry. It wouldn't be that way if we were married."

But Harry, being in the wrong, was still irritated.

"That'd be idiotic. We decided on March."

The tears in Sally Carrol's eyes faded; her expression hardened

slightly.

"Very well--I suppose I shouldn't have said that."

Harry melted.

"Dear little nut!" he cried. "Come and kiss me and let's forget."

That very night at the end of a vaudeville performance the

orchestra played "Dixie" and Sally Carrol felt something stronger

and more enduring than her tears and smiles of the day brim up

inside her. She leaned forward gripping the arms of her chair

until her face grew crimson.

"Sort of get you dear?" whispered Harry.

But she did not hear him. To the limited throb of the violins and

the inspiring beat of the kettle-drums her own old ghosts were

marching by and on into the darkness, and as fifes whistled and

sighed in the low encore they seemed so nearly out of sight that

she could have waved good-by.

"Away, Away,

Away down South in Dixie!

Away, away,

Away down South in Dixie!"

V

It was a particularly cold night. A sudden thaw had nearly

cleared the streets the day before, but now they were traversed

again with a powdery wraith of loose snow that travelled in wavy

lines before the feet of the wind, and filled the lower air with

a fine-particled mist. There was no sky--only a dark, ominous

tent that draped in the tops of the streets and was in reality a

vast approaching army of snowflakes--while over it all, chilling

away the comfort from the brown-and-green glow of lighted

windows and muffling the steady trot of the horse pulling their

sleigh, interminably washed the north wind. It was a dismal town

after all, she though, dismal.

Sometimes at night it had seemed to her as though no one lived

here--they had all gone long ago--leaving lighted houses to be

covered in time by tombing heaps of sleet. Oh, if there should be

snow on her grave! To be beneath great piles of it all winter

long, where even her headstone would be a light shadow against

light shadows. Her grave--a grave that should be flower-strewn

and washed with sun and rain.

She thought again of those isolated country houses that her train

had passed, and of the life there the long winter through--the

ceaseless glare through the windows, the crust forming on the

soft drifts of snow, finally the slow cheerless melting and the

harsh spring of which Roger Patton had told her. Her spring--to

lose it forever--with its lilacs and the lazy sweetness it

stirred in her heart. She was laying away that spring--afterward

she would lay away that sweetness.

With a gradual insistence the storm broke. Sally Carrol felt a

film of flakes melt quickly on her eyelashes, and Harry reached

over a furry arm and drew down her complicated flannel cap. Then

the small flakes came in skirmish-line, and the horse bent his

neck patiently as a transparency of white appeared momentarily on

his coat.

"Oh, he's cold, Harry," she said quickly.

"Who? The horse? Oh, no, he isn't. He likes it!"

After another ten minutes they turned a corner and came in sight

of their destination. On a tall hill outlined in vivid glaring

green against the wintry sky stood the ice palace. It was three

stories in the air, with battlements and embrasures and narrow

icicled windows, and the innumerable electric lights inside made

a gorgeous transparency of the great central hall. Sally Carrol

clutched Harry's hand under the fur robe.

"It's beautiful!" he cried excitedly. "My golly, it's beautiful,

isn't it! They haven't had one here since eighty-five!"

Somehow the notion of there not having been one since eighty-five

oppressed her. Ice was a ghost, and this mansion of it was

surely peopled by those shades of the eighties, with pale faces

and blurred snow-filled hair.

"Come on, dear," said Harry.

She followed him out of the sleigh and waited while he hitched

the horse. A party of four--Gordon, Myra, Roger Patton, and

another girl--drew up beside them with a mighty jingle of bells.

There were quite a crowd already, bundled in fur or sheepskin,

shouting and calling to each other as they moved through the

snow, which was now so thick that people could scarcely be

distinguished a few yards away.

"It's a hundred and seventy feet tall," Harry was saying to a

muffled figure beside him as they trudged toward the entrance;

"covers six thousand square yards."

She caught snatches of conversation: "One main hall"--"walls

twenty to forty inches thick"--"and the ice cave has almost a

mile of--"--"this Canuck who built it---"

They found their way inside, and dazed by the magic of the great

crystal walls Sally Carrol found herself repeating over and over

two lines from "Kubla Khan":

"It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"

In the great glittering cavern with the dark shut out she took a

seat on a wooded bench and the evening's oppression lifted. Harry

was right--it was beautiful; and her gaze travelled the smooth

surface of the walls, the blocks for which had been selected for

their purity and dearness to obtain this opalescent, translucent

effect.

"Look! Here we go--oh, boy!" cried Harry.

A band in a far corner struck up "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All

Here!" which echoed over to them in wild muddled acoustics, and

then the lights suddenly went out; silence seemed to flow down

the icy sides and sweep over them. Sally Carrol could still see

her white breath in the darkness, and a dim row of pale faces

over on the other side.

The music eased to a sighing complaint, and from outside drifted

in the full-throated remnant chant of the marching clubs. It grew

louder like some pæan of a viking tribe traversing an ancient

wild; it swelled--they were coming nearer; then a row of torches

appeared, and another and another, and keeping time with their

moccasined feet a long column of gray-mackinawed figures swept

in, snow-shoes slung at their shoulders, torches soaring and

flickering as their voice rose along the great walls.

The gray column ended and another followed, the light streaming

luridly this time over red toboggan caps and flaming crimson

mackinaws, and as they entered they took up the refrain; then

came a long platoon of blue and white, of green, of white, of

brown and yellow.

"Those white ones are the Wacouta Club," whispered Harry eagerly.

"Those are the men you've met round at dances."

The volume of the voices grew; the great cavern was a

phantasmagoria of torches waving in great banks of fire, of

colors and the rhythm of soft-leather steps. The leading column

turned and halted, platoon deploys in front of platoon until the

whole procession made a solid flag of flame, and then from

thousands of voices burst a mighty shout that filled the air like

a crash of thunder, and sent the torches wavering. It was

magnificent, it was tremendous! To Sally Carol it was the North

offering sacrifice on some mighty altar to the gray pagan God of

Snow. As the shout died the band struck up again and there came

more singing, and then long reverberating cheers by each club.

She sat very quiet listening while the staccato cries rent the

stillness; and then she started, for there was a volley of

explosion, and great clouds of smoke went up here and there

through the cavern--the flash-light photographers at work--and

the council was over. With the band at their head the clubs

formed in column once more, took up their chant, and began to

march out.

"Come on!" shouted Harry. "We want to see the labyrinths

down-stairs before they turn the lights off!"

They all rose and started toward the chute--Harry and Sally

Carrol in the lead, her little mitten buried in his big fur

gantlet. At the bottom of the chute was a long empty room of ice,

with the ceiling so low that they had to stoop--and their hands

were parted. Before she realized what he intended Harry had

darted down one of the half-dozen glittering passages that

opened into the room and was only a vague receding blot against

the green shimmer.

"Harry!" she called.

"Come on!" he cried back.

She looked round the empty chamber; the rest of the party had

evidently decided to go home, were already outside somewhere in

the blundering snow. She hesitated and then darted in after

Harry.

"Harry!" she shouted.

She had reached a turning-point thirty feet down; she heard a

faint muffled answer far to the left, and with a touch of panic

fled toward it. She passed another turning, two more yawning

alleys.

"Harry!"

No answer. She started to run straight forward, and then turned

like lightning and sped back the way she had come, enveloped in a

sudden icy terror.

She reached a turn--was it here?--took the left and came to what

should have been the outlet into the long, low room, but it was

only another glittering passage with darkness at the end. She

called again, but the walls gave back a flat, lifeless echo with

no reverberations. Retracing her steps she turned another corner,

this time following a wide passage. It was like the green lane

between the parted water of the Red Sea, like a damp vault

connecting empty tombs.

She slipped a little now as she walked, for ice had formed on the

bottom of her overshoes; she had to run her gloves along the

half-slippery, half-sticky walls to keep her balance.

"Harry!"

Still no answer. The sound she made bounced mockingly down to the

end of the passage.

Then on an instant the lights went out, and she was in complete

darkness. She gave a small, frightened cry, and sank down into a

cold little heap on the ice. She felt her left knee do something

as she fell, but she scarcely noticed it as some deep terror far

greater than any fear of being lost settled upon her. She was

alone with this presence that came out of the North, the dreary

loneliness that rose from ice-bound whalers in the Arctic seas,

from smokeless, trackless wastes where were strewn the whitened

bones of adventure. It was an icy breath of death; it was rolling

down low across the land to clutch at her.

With a furious, despairing energy she rose again and started

blindly down the darkness. She must get out. She might be lost in

here for days, freeze to death and lie embedded in the ice like

corpses she had read of, kept perfectly preserved until the

melting of a glacier. Harry probably thought she had left with

the others--he had gone by now; no one would know until next day.

She reached pitifully for the wall. Forty inches thick, they had

said--forty inches thick!

On both sides of her along the walls she felt things creeping,

damp souls that haunted this palace, this town, this North.

"Oh, send somebody--send somebody!" she cried aloud.

Clark Darrow--he would understand; or Joe Ewing; she couldn't be

left here to wander forever--to be frozen, heart, body, and soul.

This her--this Sally Carrol! Why, she was a happy thing. She

was a happy little girl. She liked warmth and summer and Dixie.

These things were foreign--foreign.

"You're not crying," something said aloud. "You'll never cry any

more. Your tears would just freeze; all tears freeze up here!"

She sprawled full length on the ice.

"Oh, God!" she faltered.

A long single file of minutes went by, and with a great weariness

she felt her eyes dosing. Then some one seemed to sit down near

her and take her face in warm, soft hands. She looked up

gratefully.

"Why it's Margery Lee," she crooned softly to herself. "I knew

you'd come." It really was Margery Lee, and she was just as Sally

Carrol had known she would be, with a young, white brow, and

wide welcoming eyes, and a hoop-skirt of some soft material that

was quite comforting to rest on.

"Margery Lee."

It was getting darker now and darker--all those tombstones ought

to be repainted sure enough, only that would spoil 'em, of

course. Still, you ought to be able to see 'em.

Then after a succession of moments that went fast and then slow,

but seemed to be ultimately resolving themselves into a multitude

of blurred rays converging toward a pale-yellow sun, she heard a

great cracking noise break her new-found stillness.

It was the sun, it was a light; a torch, and a torch beyond that,

and another one, and voices; a face took flesh below the torch,

heavy arms raised her and she felt something on her cheek--it

felt wet. Some one had seized her and was rubbing her face with

snow. How ridiculous--with snow!

"Sally Carrol! Sally Carrol!"

It was Dangerous Dan McGrew; and two other faces she didn't know.

"Child, child! We've been looking for you two hours! Harry's

half-crazy!"

Things came rushing back into place--the singing, the torches,

the great shout of the marching clubs. She squirmed in Patton's

arms and gave a long low cry.

"Oh, I want to get out of here! I'm going back home. Take me

home"---her voice rose to a scream that sent a chill to Harry's

heart as he came racing down the next passage--"to-morrow!" she

cried with delirious, unstrained passion--"To-morrow! To-morrow!

To-morrow!"