A Man in the Open Part 36

Closing the door which led into the house, I opened that which gave upon the yard, then placed a flickering candle on the counter, and my chair in front of it facing the darkness. All through the evening the drenching rain had fallen, with sob of dripping eaves. Now at the open doorway, loud, insistent, the great diapason of the rain was choral to those little sad voices which fluted, throbbed, and muttered near at hand, the lament of the water drops, the liquid note from every pool, the plaint of trickling streamlets.

It is the presence of the dead which makes their resting-places serene with quiet beauty, instinct with tenderness toward all living hearts.

That presence had entered the good log house, a home of human warmth, of kindly comfort, made holy, consecrate, where people would hush their voices, constrained to reverence.

And in the gracious monotone of the rain, compound of voices joined in requiem, I felt a soothing melancholy beauty, knowing well how peace not of this world had come into the homestead.

But outside that, beyond, in the dread forest, a threat, a menace filled the outer darkness. Fear clutched at my heart, a presentiment told me of evil, of instant danger. Then, as though the horror in the night moved other hearts as well as mine, the Chinese cook came groping his way through the dining-hall and humbly scratched at the door. I let him in and he crept to a stool in the near corner. I whispered to him:

"Are you frightened, Sam?"

"Too plenty much," he quavered, "me flitened bad."

He lighted his pipe and seemed, like me, to be eased by human company.

Once only he moved, and in the queerest way came with his long yellow fingers to touch me, then timid, but rea.s.sured, crept back to his stool in the corner.

Soon Nurse Panton joined us, her hair in corkscrews, looking very plain, peevish because she had not been called at midnight. "What's the matter?" she asked crossly, and for answer I pulled down the blinds. She shivered as she pa.s.sed the open door to take a chair behind it. She begged me to close the door, but the night was warm, and besides I dared not. Nurse and Chinaman each had a gla.s.s of port, and so did I, feeling much better afterward.

An hour pa.s.sed, the Chinaman nodding like those ridiculous mandarin figures with loose heads, the nurse pallid against the gloom, staring until she got on my nerves. I always disliked that woman with her precise routine and large flat feet.

Far off I heard the thud of a gunshot, then three shots all together, and afterward a fifth. The evil in the night was coming nearer, and I said to myself, "If I were really frightened I should close that door.

I'm half a coward."

The hero himself had strung his Victoria Cross upon a riband which I wore about my neck. Could I wear the cross and set an example of cowardice to these poor creatures who crouched in the corners of the room? To show fear is a privilege of the underbred. But I did long for Jesse.

Through the murmurs of the nearer rain, I felt a throb in the ground, then heard a sound grow, of a horse galloping. The swift soft rhythm, now loud, now very faint again, then very near, echoed against the barns, thundered across the bridge, splashed through the flooded yard, and ceased abruptly.

Billy had come home from the Falls, he was stabling his roan, he was crossing the yard in haste, his spurs clanked at the door-step and, dreading his news, a sudden panic seized me. I fled behind the bar.

He entered, astream with rain, shading his eyes against the candle-light; then as I moved he called out, as though I were at a distance, begging me for brandy. His face was haggard, his hand as he drank was covered with dried blood, he slammed the gla.s.s on the counter so that it broke.

"You heard the shots?" he said.

"At Spite House?" I whispered.

He nodded.

"You were there?" I asked.

"Half a mile beyond. When I got there it was all dark. Looked in through the end window, but the rain got down my neck, so I went round. The front door was standing open. I listened a while. No need to get shot myself. Thought the place was derelict. Then I heard groans.

"Struck a bunch of matches then, found the hall lamp, and got it alight.

Wished I'd got a gun, but there wasn't nothing handy except the poker, so I took that and the light--just followed the groans. He was lying on the barroom floor."

"Brooke?"

"Yes. Shot through the throat, blood spurting down the side of his neck, making a big pool on the oil-cloth. You know the thing you make with a stick and a scarf to twist up? A tourniquet, yes. Well, it choked the swine, so I quit. He whispered something about my thumb hurting the wound, so I told him my father's neck hurt worse.

"Up to that I thought he was just acting, playing pathetic to touch my feelings. Once he muttered your name, and then he was dead."

"Brooke dead!"

"Yes, he'd been shooting Polly, too. I traced her blood tracks all the way to the front door. h.e.l.lo, what's that? I thought I heard--"

I listened and there was only the sound of the rain.

"I suppose it's all right," said Billy, "we'd better close that door, though."

But before he could reach the door, Nurse Panton called him away to her corner, where she spoke in a whisper so that I should not hear, sending him, perhaps, for her cloak. Meanwhile I came from behind the counter to my former seat before the open doorway, where I sat staring into the darkness, unable to feel any more, but just benumbed. Across my weariness flickered the mournful soliloquy of a poor barn-door fowl--"Yesterday an egg, to-morrow a feather duster! What's the good of anythin', why, nothin'."

Then I, too, heard a sound in the night, and because Billy and the nurse were muttering, I stood up with the candle-light behind me, trying to see into the darkness. Billy said afterward he had moved quickly, to shut the door, but I waved him back just as the shot rang out.

The explosion blinded, deafened, seemed even to scorch me, while the mirror on the wall came crashing down. Stunned, dazzled, horrified, I felt a dull rage at this attempted murder.

A second revolver-shot stirred my hair, and I'm afraid then that I lost my temper. I am not a fish-f.a.g that I should stoop to fighting a creature such as Polly, but I would have died rather than let her see one trace of fear.

Billy rushed past the firing to reach the door and close it, but I ordered him to desist, then grasped the candle and held it out to show a better light.

"Lower your lights!" I shouted into the dark, "you fired too high!"

A revolver crashed on the door-step, and low down within three feet of the ground, I saw a dreadful face convulsed with rage, changing to fear.

The woman was sinking to her knees, she buried her face in grimy, blood-smeared hands, and rocked to and fro in awful abandonment of grief.

The danger was over now, the menace of evil in the night had vanished. I felt an immense relief, with hands wet, mouth parched, knees shaking, and great need of tears. I knew the strain had been beyond endurance, but now it was gone, although a velvet darkness closing round me, black night swinging round me, sickness--I must not faint, when I had to fight, to keep command, to set an example worthy of Jesse's wife. And there I was sitting in my chair, with drops of sweat forming and pouring on my forehead. Billy, groping on the floor at my feet, had found and lighted the candle, and was holding the flame in the palms of his hands till it steadied and blazed up clear. "Buck up, missus," he was saying.

"Cheer-oh. Don't let 'em know you swooned, mum. Grab on to that cross, and make it proud of you. That's right. Laugh, mum! Laugh! Wish'd I'd half yer grit."

I had come to myself and only Billy knew, who was loyal. As the candle blazed up I saw the Chinaman gibbering like some toothless mask of yellow india-rubber, but that nurse still kept up her silly screaming, until I ordered her to shut her mouth, which she did in sheer surprise.

There lay Polly p.r.o.ne across the doorway on her face, racked with convulsive sobs, until feeling, I suppose, the lashing rain on her back, she rose on hands and knees like some forlorn wild animal crawling to shelter, while behind her stretched a trail of wet and blood. I stared until in shame she sat up, still for all the world like an animal lost to human feeling, and to a woman's dignity, until as she looked at me a wan shamed smile seemed to apologize. She sat back then against the log wall, limp, relaxed with weakness.

"Nurse," I called, still with my gaze on Polly, "this woman is wounded.

You are a nurse. You claimed to be a nurse."

But Miss Panton indulged in hysterics, so I turned to Billy. "Run into the house, get the hip bath, warm water, blankets, bandages."

"Aye, aye, mum," he touched his forelock, and swinging the Chinaman to his feet: "Come along, Sam," he grunted, and bustled him off on duty.

Polly looked up, trusting me with her tawny bloodshot eyes. Her voice was a dreary hoa.r.s.eness, demanding liquor. But with an open wound, to quicken the heart's action might be fatal, and Polly knew well it was no use pleading. Instead of that she pointed at the nurse, and said, "Send _that_ away."

I turned upon Nurse Panton who sat forsaken and ostentatious in her corner. "Go," I said, "and make beef tea."

Sniff.

I took her by the shoulders, and marched her out of the room, while Polly grinned approval. I came back and asked where she was wounded. She pointed to the left hip, but I dared not remove any clothing which might have caught and sealed the flow of blood. A sole diet of alcohol and months of neglect had made her condition such that I shrank from touching her.

"So you're Kate," she lay against the bottom log of the wall, head back, eyes nearly shut, looking along her nose at me, "Carroty Kate."

Her own tawny hair, draggled, and hung in snakes, was streaked with dirty gray.

"Ye took Jesse," she said in weary scorn, "so I ruined him. Then this Brooke, he fell in love with yer, so I murdered him. Take everything, give nothin'; that's you, Carrots, give nothin'. That's you, Carrots, give nothin' away, not even a drink. And I gave everything.