Rutledge Part 15

He had never been over it but once, he said, and that was two years ago, but he thought he knew it; it didn't seem so long to him before, though, he must confess.

A genuine pang of fear crossed me as I saw the man's bewilderment and uncertainty, and as I realized that I must depend on myself, for he knew no more about the road than I did, it was plain, and seemed, indeed, fast losing his wits, from sheer fatigue and terror.

"Think a minute, Michael," I said, in a firm voice, "how ought the road to terminate? Does it come directly out on the turnpike, or do we have to cross any fields before we reach it?"

If he remembered right, there was a field to cross--no--he couldn't be sure, on the whole, that the road didn't open right into the turnpike, after all. Perhaps it didn't, though; it was two years since he had been over it, and how could he remember--so dark as it was, too!

A moment's reflection told me that there was no use in going back till we had tried a little further, for the turnpike could not be very distant. I thought I had a general idea of where the village lay, and that we were going toward it. So cheering up my attendant as well as I could, and suiting my pace to his, I endured another half mile of pretty uncomfortable suspense before an opening in the trees, and a patch of cloudy sky, sent a ray of comfort to my heart.

"Courage, Michael!" I cried, "here's the end of our troubles--here's an opening in the woods. Is this the way the road looked, do you think?"

Michael sprang down from his horse with great alacrity, to let down the bars that r.e.t.a.r.ded our progress. Ah, yes! This was all right--just as he said; he knew we had to cross a field.

Quite rea.s.sured, I told him to ride on in front, as he seemed to know the way now, and he valiantly led on, along the edges of what seemed to me a ploughed field; but Michael being positive that there was a beaten road along it, I submitted to his judgment. By and by, we came to another pair of bars, which Michael confidently took down, and conscientiously put up after we had pa.s.sed through, and again led the van.

In the meantime, I watched the sky with anxiety. The wind was rising, and swept cold across the fields; the clouds, though broken and flying, obscured the light of the moon, yet low in the east. I had no way but to trust to Michael, and I tried to do it without any misgivings, as he seemed so confident; but it was not long before he began to waver again.

After a pause, and a moment's bewildered gaze around, he struck his hand upon his forehead, and exclaimed:

"Upon my honor, Miss, it's my opinion we're in a dreadful fix! I know no more than the dead where we are!"

"Fool!" I cried, starting forward in an agony of apprehension, "why didn't you say so before?"

Michael gave a miserable groan, and seemed utterly confounded.

"Let us go back as fast as ever we can!" I exclaimed.

"That's just what I can't see how to do," whined my hopeful guide, "for between letting down, and putting up bars, and crossing backward and forward, I can't seem to to remember where we did come in."

It was too true; the place we had entered seemed a wild open common, fenced on two sides, while on the others, it stretched away into woods and hills; but since we had entered it, we had ridden so irregularly, that I was, as well as Michael, at a loss to tell on which side we had come in, and if there was a wagon track, it was too dark to see it. I made a strong effort to command myself, and said concisely, "The best way, Michael, is for me to ride along the fence here, and see if I can't find something that will direct me to the place where we came in, while you ride across the fields, there, on the left, and see if you can't find a road through the woods, and come back as soon as you've found any, and tell me."

Michael obeyed, and spurred off toward the woods, while I picked my way back along the irregular fence, which in some places was quite hidden by the high bushes, that grew thick on either side, while in others, it was quite open and un.o.bscured. But the uncertain light, the similarity of one pair of bars, and one side of the common to another, completely baffled me, and I was as much bewildered as Michael himself. I tried, however, to be brave and keep up my courage, trusting momentarily that Michael would return and report favorably of a road on the other side, which would lead _somewhere;_ anything was better than this pathless common.

I tried to be patient as the moments pa.s.sed without any signs of his return. I walked my horse up and down beside the fence, and struggled manfully to be calm. There was not light enough left to see him till he got near me; all I could do was to wait. And I did wait; hours, it seemed to me, till every nerve throbbed with fear, and the nameless horrors that night and solitude always bring to those who brave them for the first, crowded so upon me, that I would rather have ridden into certain danger, than have waited there another moment; and I dashed across the common, toward the dark woods that skirted it. I halted and called as loudly as I could, but no answer came. Then riding along the edge of the wood, I called again, with all my strength, and waited for the reply as if my life hung upon the sound of a human voice. None came, and half wild at the dawning of this new terror, entire isolation, I whipped Madge to her utmost speed, and flew along the whole length of the wood, then back again, shouting Michael's name.

At that moment the moon came out from behind the shifting clouds, and halting suddenly, I looked around me; the common, as far as I could see, was bare; the woods were before me; I had halted at the entrance of a road that led into them. Perhaps Michael was wandering there, and calling once more, I waited in vain for any answer but the swaying of the boughs in the night wind, and the panting of my tired horse. At this renewed disappointment, all my firmness gave way, and all the perils and horrors that fancy suggested rushed upon me; dropping the reins upon the horse's neck, and covering my face with my hands, I uttered a cry of despair. Startled by it, and by the sudden relaxing of the reins, the horse gave a bound forward, and dashed terrified into the woods. That I was not unseated, is the strangest part of all my strange adventure; but conscious of nothing, save an agonized fear of losing this my only living companion, I clung tightly to her neck, as brushing against the overhanging boughs, and swaying from side to side of the narrow road, she tore onward in her headlong race. Of the length of time that pa.s.sed before, spent with fatigue and shuddering in every limb, she paused suddenly before a fallen tree that blockaded the road, I can form no idea. It was all, as then in acting, so now in recalling, one wild dream of terror. It may have been moments, or perhaps only seconds, before, raising myself from my crouching att.i.tude, I looked around, and saw the position of the horse, and the fright that she was in. The moon was shining fitfully through the naked branches of the forest around us, and right across the road, lay the giant trunk of a fallen tree; while the only sound except the moaning of the wind, was the brawling of a stream that ran beside the road. Madge shook violently, while I tried to soothe her, but in vain.

I slipped down from the saddle, still holding the bridle over my arm, and almost fell, from the dizzy feeling on first touching the ground after being so long in one position. I regained my feet, and approaching her, patted her neck, and tried to urge her to make the leap; it was unbearable to think of staying an instant here! But it was hopeless; with her feet planted in the earth, and eyes dilated with terror, she refused to move. A groan of misery escaped me as this last hope was cut off; I tied the bridle to a low branch, and sitting down upon the fallen tree, buried my face in my hands, in hopeless, stupefied despair. The cold night-air was chilling me to the heart; my habit was, at best, but barely warm enough in the day, and when heated with exercise; now, the wind seemed to strike through and through me; and I crouched down, hiding my eyes from the ghastly, fitful dancing of the moonbeams, and shook from head to foot.

Look in whatever way I might, there was nothing but terror staring me in the face. How many miles I was from any human habitation, I did not dare to think; but indeed it mattered little; I could not, benumbed and aching as I was, have walked half a mile, even with the certainty of help before me; and I doubted whether, if the horse could have been coaxed over the cruel obstacle that stopped her course, I could have mounted her again. I was bound, helpless, hopeless! My exaggerated fancy refused all hope, and seized all that was frightful, and held up before me the dread that, unless some unforeseen help should come, I should perish during the slow waning of the awful night that had but just begun. I saw life and youth,

"And time and hope behind me cast,"

and one black shadow creeping toward me, slowly, but with unswerving tread; silently, but with intensest gaze, freezing me with horror. And with a sort of mockery, the words that had seemed so soothing and peaceful, when, life was sure and unthreatened, rang in my ears:

"Death comes to set thee free-- O meet him cheerily As thy true friend."

Starting to my feet, I cried aloud, as if stung with sudden pain: "No, no! not such death as this; I cannot! Oh, is there no help!" And calling pa.s.sionately Mr. Rutledge's name, I listened as if it were impossible that I could call on him in vain. But no voice nor answer came; the swaying branches moaned loudly as the angry wind swept through them; the swollen stream rushed by with a mournful sound; the dead leaves fluttered in the fitful blast: this was my answer--this was all the help my appeals would gain. With a cry of anguish, I cast myself down upon the earth, and sent to heaven such a prayer as only despair and mortal terror can wring from the heart. Not as people pray at home, morning and evening, with Death at worst a distant enemy, and Terror and Temptation just so many words; not as people pray from duty, or from habit, or out of respect to religion, I prayed then. Not as I had often asked for mercy, Sunday after Sunday, in the Litany, and thought I was in earnest, did I ask for it now; but with such agony of earnestness, such wild entreaty, as those ten men in the Samaritan village put into their prayer for mercy; a De Profundis that came from the lowest depths of abas.e.m.e.nt and despair. It was a fearful struggle, but it pa.s.sed over, and left me calmer.

Whether it was that hope was dead, and the quiet that crept over me was the quiet of despair, or that really faith and resignation had come at last, I could not tell; but exhausted, benumbed, half dead, I lay motionless upon the ground, while the moments, crept slowly on, and formed themselves into hours; and still, with an ear that never lost a note of all the dirge that sounded through the forest, I lay, face downward, indifferent and apathetic. Consciousness never slept a single moment of the dreadful hours that pa.s.sed over me, but Fear and Excitement did; and these terrible enemies only woke, when a sound that was not brawl of stream or roar of wind, profaned the ghastly solitude.

It was a sound far fainter and less appalling than those I had been listening to, unmoved, so long, but it roused the keenest terror. Far down the road, I first caught it, so low that it might have been the falling of a nut the high wind had shaken from its tree; again, this time nearer, and the leaves rustle, and a chance bough crackles. I do not stir a hair's breadth from where I lie--the step approaches--I do not raise my head nor move a muscle--I do not think, nor wonder what it is, but all faculties absorbed in one, all energies concentrated in that one effort, I listen for the approaching sound. Nearer and nearer; and the quick terror shoots through every chilled vein. In another moment--but with resistless power, horror sweeps over every sense, and in one wild surge, blots out reason, memory, and consciousness.

CHAPTER X.

"O, I have pa.s.sed a miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days; So full of dismal terror was the time."

RICHARD III.

A shapeless tissue of dreams follow this dark warp upon the web of memory--how much the flashes of half-received truth, how much the fabric of distorted fancy, I cannot say. Into some such form as this, they have shaped themselves: mixed up in a confused way with the sights and sounds of that wild solitude, comes the recollection of being clasped in arms whose familiar hold inspired no terror; of hurried words of endearment, and a kiss upon my forehead that lulled the returning pulsations of fear into repose again; then a blank; then shouting voices, and the sound of footsteps, many and heavy, rouse me once more into faint and fitful consciousness, and dim and spectral as a graveyard dance of witches, appear strange men with lanterns, who cl.u.s.ter round me; and as I close my eyes in shuddering fear, Michael's face, in distorted ugliness, takes a hundred ghastly shapes, dances before my eyes, and keeps out everything else, for a s.p.a.ce of time unspeakably frightful, as it is immeasurably long.

At last, dull stupor overpowers it; and long, long, after that, comes a woman's kind face and gentle touch; then a hand and voice that are unfamiliar and unwelcome; cat-like and soft, from which I shrink in aversion. Then, they too vanish, and when next the uncertain mist of oblivion rolls up, I am lying in a long low room, strange and new to me, but not unpleasing, even by the dim light that burns upon the table, shaded from me by a painted screen. My eyes wander around inquiringly upon the simple furniture of the room, the dark, low walls, the piles of books and pamphlets that heap the shelves irregularly, till they rest upon the two figures at the other end of the room. A fire burns low on the hearth, and beside it sits a man, stooping his head upon his hand.

Another in an att.i.tude that is familiar to me, stands with his arm upon the mantelpiece shading his eyes from the light. They talk low and earnestly; sometimes the one standing by the mantelpiece strides impatiently backward and forward, across the room, and resumes his former att.i.tude. He by the fire never moves. I try to listen, but the effort confuses me; and it is a long while before any of their words reach me, and then only in a broken, uncertain way. The first I catch are those of the voice that is familiar to me:

"It is the first time I ever rejected your counsel; the first time I ever put aside your warning. Do you believe me when I say it pains me to the heart, after so many years of steadfast and close friendship, to rebel against the sacrifice it requires of me? But you do not know what you ask, indeed you do not!"

"Perhaps not, Arthur, perhaps not," answered his companion, in a low voice. "Do not think again of what I said; it was an over-anxiety for your happiness that prompted me to speak; and now forget the words, and remember only the love that moved them."

"No, Shenstone, I will not forget them," the other says, warmly; "I know too well the value of your counsels. I will remember what you have said, and keep the caution by me, when there is need for caution. But you must not blame me, if I cannot put aside at once a hope that has got so strong a hold upon me. I promise you to do nothing rashly, to let nothing blind my judgment, to put the test of absence, change of scene, change of interest, upon us both; years, if you will, shall pa.s.s before I dare attempt to realize my hope; years that shall prove its possibility, or show its folly; but do not ask me to give it up at once."

Mr. Shenstone shook his head. "Will it be easier to tear up the cherished hope of years, than to put down the fond fancy of a day, my friend, do you think?"

"I am not a man given to fancies, am I, Shenstone? A life as cold as the last twenty years of mine has been, does not look much like the pursuit of fancies. You have known--who better?--the bitterness that poisoned the very fountain-head of my youth; you have seen how it has tainted the current of my whole life; how that after years of suffering and self-denial, it only needs a word, a recollection of the past to bring the bitter flood back upon my heart. You know all this, and yet you deny me the only charm I see in life; the only light that gilds the dark future! Is this kind?"

He walked impatiently across the room, then came back to his place. The other did not look up nor speak.

"I know what you would say," continued his companion, after a moment; "I know you would remind me that the same blow that blighted my youth, struck deeper at your heart; that you have learned to live without what was life to you once; that I can learn the same hard lesson. I have tried, oh, my friend! I have tried to gain your heights of faith and hope; but still the unconquered flesh drags me down: the curse that generations of G.o.dless ancestors have laid upon me is unexpiated yet.

You stand now where I cannot hope to stand till

"Death comes to set me free."

Death, that I shall have won! And hoped for, you know longingly, in the old days of wretchedness."

"That's past, Arthur, thank G.o.d's good grace; and life is no longer a penance to you; and that it never may be again, G.o.d in His mercy grant, and spare you what I dreaded for you. G.o.d bring you higher than I stand, but by a gentler way, if it be His will! Arthur, it was a fiercer struggle than even you can understand, in which my faith was born. It was a conflict that lasts through most men's lives, that I pa.s.sed through at one dire struggle, and died unto the world forever. But, looking backward, oh, Arthur, I can look back now and see how

----"One dead joy appears The platform of some better hope."

Better, as heaven is than earth, as peace is than temptation, as the service of G.o.d is than the weary bondage of the world!"

He lifted his head a moment, as if in involuntary triumph, then bent it again, and was silent.

At that moment the door softly opened, and the woman I had seen before stole up to where I lay, and bending down, looked in my face with anxious inquiry, while the friends at the other end of the room hushed their earnest tones, and one (my head was throbbing too much to see which) started forward, and said anxiously:

"Has the doctor come back yet, Mrs. Arnold?"