A DECISION
It was not easy for either Nancy or Olaf to give any connected account
afterward of their adventure with the bear. Nancy could never describe
it clearly at all, and Olaf, when questioned, gave a very simple version
of the rescue.
“I saw the bear striking at them when I came near, so I just whanged her
over the head with the milk-bucket, and she beat it.”
Dabney Mills, who had no knowledge at the time of what was happening,
was able, perhaps, to give the most picturesque story of the three. Not
even he, however, was able to deny that it was the milk-pail that saved
the day. Olaf had been carrying it on his arm when he heard Nancy’s
frantic cry for help, and he had never thought of setting it down, nor
did he spill quite all of the contents as he ran to help her. He had
come panting up the slope, just in time to see the bear’s blow graze the
girl’s shoulder and rip away her sleeve. Being still out of reach, he
had hurled the unwieldy tin bucket with all his might and with most
successful aim. The clanging blow with which it struck startled Nancy,
and the unexpected spectacle of a stream of white milk pouring over
those black, furry shoulders made her feel that she had been bereft of
her senses.
“And I have seen,” she said when she was trying to relate the tale to
Beatrice, “what nobody else ever saw; I have seen a bear look
surprised.”
Astonishment and horror seemed, indeed, to take instant possession of
Mrs. Bruin, for she dropped from the ledge and made off through the
bushes. The milk-pail, dislodged from where it had caught among the
stones, rolled clanging and banging after her with a noise that lent
even greater speed to her flight.
Olaf and Nancy stared at each other for a moment while his anxious face
relaxed slowly into a broad grin and she burst out into irrepressible
giggles. The strain of the terrible minutes that had just passed broke
down suddenly into uncontrollable mirth so that gale after gale of
laughter swept over them both. Nancy was so breathless from her
desperate climb that laughing was painful, yet she could not check it
and was forced to sit down upon the grass and lean against the rock wall
in her helplessness. Olaf recovered first, rubbed his eyes, wet with
laughter, on the sleeve of his coat, and was able to speak quite
soberly.
“After all, it isn’t so funny,” he observed. He leaned far out over the
precipice and looked down. “I thought you would go over before I got
there.”
“We must look after Dabney Mills,” Nancy reminded him suddenly. “Suppose
he had been killed!”
“If he had it would be by no fault of his,” Olaf muttered as he helped
her to her feet and walked with her to where the reporter was sitting
up, looking about him with a dazed expression.
“You were mighty slow coming,” he said morosely to Olaf. “That brute
could have knocked us into kingdom come.”
He was feeling about vaguely, first in his pockets, then among the weeds
and stones about him. A great blue bruise was spreading slowly over his
face and neck.
“Have you lost something?” Nancy inquired.
“Just my note-book. I—I wanted to put something down in it.”
He seemed still to be somewhat stunned, but he got up and went with them
down the hill. For some time he was silent, an unusual condition for
him, but before they were halfway home he began to talk again, evidently
composing a proper account of his adventure.
“A very dangerous, vicious animal!” he observed. “It was quite touch and
go for a time, a very narrow escape! Of course, if I had been carrying
any sort of weapon—” Nancy interrupted with an exclamation, and Olaf
with a covert chuckle. She was about to declare very frankly that if
Olaf had been unarmed and Dabney possessed of the milk-bucket, the
affair would not have been very different. Olaf, however, dropped behind
and spoke to her in an undertone:
“Please let him go on. He will talk himself into believing he was quite
a hero, and I want to hear him do it.”
Aunt Anna was given a very mild account of the affair when they reached
home, with little emphasis on the danger and a great deal on how absurd
the bear had looked. Yet her eyes fell upon the deep scratches on
Nancy’s arm and her torn sleeve, and then turned to Olaf with a look
that made him suddenly glow with embarrassment and pride, but also made
him bid them a panic-stricken good night. When Aunt Anna’s glance
traveled to Dabney Mills who was beginning to relate his version of the
story quite fluently, he paused, stammered, and declared that he, too,
must be going. There was no one present who pressed him to stay.
“I will have to give this to Hester for her chickens,” said Nancy,
surveying the wreck of her cake ruefully, just before she went to bed.
The girls had promised their aunt that they would not talk a great deal
before they went to sleep, but they found it difficult to keep their
word. Besides discussing the bear adventure they had also to talk over
Dr. Minturn’s advice to Beatrice given that morning and heard by Nancy
now for the first time.
“He said,” quoted Beatrice, “‘that we must not hurry a man who has been
hurt to his very soul.’”
“I think the doctor was right,” the younger girl observed thoughtfully.
“John Herrick—I can’t seem to call him anything else—must be just like
Aunt Anna, with just such a will as hers. And the more he loved his
family the more it must have hurt him to believe that they doubted his
honor.”
“But suppose he never comes back to us,” said Beatrice. “Must we sit by
and do nothing? He knew who we were from the first day we came here, but
he has never made a sign.”
Although they had put out the light, the glowing hands of Beatrice’s
wrist-watch reminded her of her promise. Nancy accordingly scurried into
her own room to bed, and presumably dropped asleep as quickly as did
Beatrice, who could hardly even remember laying her head upon the
pillow.
It must have been several hours later that Beatrice awoke. She had slept
so soundly that all her weariness was gone and the faintest of sounds
outside had broken through the thin fabric of her dreams. She sat up,
and turned to the window close beside her bed, to peer out and to
listen.
It was moonlight again—a very clear night and so quiet that the big
pine-trees stood as immovable as though they were a painted forest on
the drop curtain of a theater. The white flood of light set into sharp
relief the square frame of the window. Beatrice, looking at the ruffled
white curtains, the twin pots of berries on the sill, and the row of
books below, thought how quaintly cozy and homelike it looked in
contrast to that ghostly wilderness outside. Then, as she leaned against
the frame to look out, she drew a deep breath of astonishment.
Very evidently Aunt Anna had been unable to sleep and was sitting,
wrapped in her big cloak, reading at the window just below, as was often
her custom. A square of light on the ground below, and a shadow that
moved a little now and then, as though for the turning of a page, made
it plain that this was so. And opposite the window, in a clearing among
the pines, some one was walking to and fro. It was John Herrick, with
the moonlight on his fair hair and flooding the ground about him like a
pool of still water. Somewhere in the dark behind him his horse was
tied, for Beatrice, when she listened, could hear now and then the faint
stamping of an impatient foot or the jingle of the bit.
If Aunt Anna heard the sounds, she did not distinguish them from the
ordinary noises of the night, nor, with the lighted lamp beside her,
could she see clearly anything that lay in the forest beyond. But
Beatrice could guess, as surely as though she stood in the moonlight
beside John Herrick, just how distinct before his eyes was the lighted
window with his sister sitting beside it. She could imagine, even, just
what that picture must mean to him, the glowing, shaded lamp, the
cushioned chair, the quiet beauty of Aunt Anna’s profile. How they must
all stand for home and familiar things, for the unswerving affection of
those of his own blood. He must know, surely, why his sister had come
there, what she was waiting for as she sat, unconscious and serene,
beside the window. He had only to lift his voice ever so little above
the whispers of the forest; he had only to speak her name and the long
spell would be broken. Beatrice held her breath to listen. There was no
sound.
[Illustration: He had only to lift his voice and the long spell would be
broken]
He stood, staring up at the window for a long, long time; then turned
upon his heel at last. Beatrice could actually hear the harsh grating of
his heavy boot upon a stone as he did so. She heard the jingling of the
curb as he loosed his horse; she heard the creak of the stirrup leather
and the scramble of iron-shod feet as he swung into the saddle and was
off. There was no hesitation or stopping to look back; it was as though
he had come to a final decision. Beatrice felt that there was something
very ominous, something dismaying in the steadily diminishing thud,
thud, of the hoof-beats, as horse and rider drew away into the darkness.
With a long sigh she turned, shivering, from the window and buried her
face in the pillow.
Christina came up the hill to see them next day, a radiant Christina who
had learned that she need no longer keep secret from her friends her joy
in Olaf’s return. The promise of the brilliant moonlight had not been
fulfilled in the morning’s weather, for deluges of rain were falling,
sluicing down the steep roof, dripping from the trees, and swelling the
stream until the sound of the waterfall filled the whole house. No
amount of rain could quench the Finnish woman’s happiness, however, as
she stood in the kitchen, her garments soaked and her face beaming.
“It seemed so wrong to keep the good news from you, when it was really
through Miss Beatrice that Olaf came home. I would never have dared to
ask any one to write to him in the face of Thorvik’s forbidding it. Olaf
came very early one morning, when Thorvik happened to be away for the
night, and we went straight up to see John Herrick, for he was always
the best friend my boy had. He made Olaf promise that he would not show
himself in the village, and I know myself that it is wise that he should
keep away after that business at Mason’s Bluff, but it is hard for me to
see so little of him.”
Of her son’s adventure with the bear she made very light indeed.
“He did nothing more than he should,” she declared. “Of course, he might
have been hurt, but there was that dear Miss Nancy; think what might
have come to her!”
Her presence in the kitchen was very welcome, for Nancy’s arm was too
stiff to be of much service, and Beatrice admitted frankly that as cook
she was a sorry substitute.
“Willing but awkward, I would describe myself if I were advertising for
a situation,” she told them. “Nancy has a special talent for cooking,
but I have a genius for breaking dishes and scalding myself.”
Christina, therefore, stayed to cook the dinner and to bake a second
edition of the cake upon which misfortune had fallen yesterday. Olaf
came across the hill through the rain and sat for long in the kitchen
with his mother, making her the most peaceful and uninterrupted visit
that had been possible since his return. Nancy, going in and out on
various errands, heard snatches of tales of the high seas, of whales and
hurricanes, of hot foreign ports baking in the tropical sun, of winds
that cut you like a knife as you slid across the slippery decks with
great waves washing over you, of the longing for the land and home, and
also—Olaf came to it slowly—of the restless desire that grows and grows,
of the sailor on leave to be at sea again.
“Ah, but you wouldn’t go just yet!” cried Christina in alarm.
“No, not just yet. John Herrick has been so kind to me that I feel like
standing by him in—in something that he has on hand just now.” But Olaf
leaned back in his chair and looked out through the blurred windows as
though he were already impatient to be off.
They were an oddly assorted pair, he so tall, straight, and American,
she, despite her ordinary clothes and her careful English, so foreign
still. Beatrice thought so, as she came into the kitchen in the late
afternoon, and found them both making preparations to depart. The day
had been a long and heavy one to her. Her mind was full of what she had
seen the night before, although she had not yet had time to discuss it
in private with Nancy. She longed to ride over to the Herricks’ house,
for what purpose she could not herself say. The pouring rain, however,
made such an expedition so unreasonable that she could not, in the whole
course of the day, think of an excuse urgent enough to explain her
going.
“I wish you were not going to be so wet,” she said to Christina. “You
will be soaked again before you get home.”
“It is not raining so much now,” Olaf observed, reaching for his cap
that lay on the window-sill, “it will soon—”
He interrupted himself suddenly and turned round to them with a
delighted grin. He spoke softly and jerked his head toward the window
where, to Beatrice’s astonishment, she saw dimly through the wet pane
that a face was peering in. The close-set eyes and ungainly nose showed
that it was Dabney Mills.
“I never knew before just what the word eavesdropper meant,” said Olaf.
“Think how the water must be pouring off the roof and running down that
fellow’s neck!”
Seeing that he had been observed, Dabney came to the door and a moment
later stood, a bedraggled and dejected figure, just inside the
threshold.
“I was looking in to see if there was any one at home,” he tried to
explain, while Olaf supplemented:
“On such a fine day he was afraid you might all be out.”
“I went up the mountain to see if I could get back my note-book,” Dabney
went on to account for his forlorn condition. “I have been looking for
hours, but I couldn’t find it.”
“Maybe the bear put it in her pocket and went away with it,” suggested
Christina flippantly. “Anyway, it would be soaked to a pulp by this
time.”
“You needn’t worry, I picked it up last night when I went back to get
the milk-can,” Olaf said. He brought the familiar leather-covered book
from an inside pocket and held it out to its owner. A wicked twinkle
that he could not suppress seemed to fill Dabney Mills with
panic-stricken suspicion.
“You’ve been reading it,” he cried. “You had no right. You have been
prying into my private affairs.”
The other boy’s face flushed with anger.
“It may be I haven’t been brought up a gentleman like you,” he returned
hotly. “But I wouldn’t be peering and prying into other people’s
business for all that. Whatever mean secrets you have hid away in that
book, they are there still, safe and sound. All I did was to write a
page at the end. I was afraid that if you didn’t have an account of that
bear business at once, you might forget just how it happened.”
Dabney snatched the book and nervously turned to the last page. Beatrice
was so close that she could not help seeing that it was covered with
Olaf’s square schoolboy writing. The last sentence caught her eye,
giving a clue to the rest.
“Even though our hero took the precaution of getting behind the lady who
was with him, he did not escape entirely unharmed.”
Dabney thrust the book into his pocket and shot Olaf a glance of wicked
rage.
“I am very much obliged to you,” he said. “You shall hear of my
gratitude later. I know more about you than you think, young man.”
He went out into the rain, slamming the door behind him.