Satan Sanderson Part 9

"Palms of Victory, Crowns of Glory!

Palms of Victory, I shall wear!"

He sang but the three lines. For suddenly the car left the road--the inflated tires rebounded from the steel ridge of the railroad track--the forward axle caught an iron signal post--and the great motor-car, its shattered lamp jingling like a gong, its pistons thrusting in midair, reared on two wheels, hurling its occupant out like a pebble thrown from a sling, half-turned, and, leaving a trail of sparks like the tail of a rocket behind it, plunged heavily over the rim of the bluff into the river.

A moment later the deep black waters of "the hole" had closed above the ma.s.s of sentient steel. The swift current had smoothed away every trace of the strange monster it had engulfed, and there, by the side of the track, huddled against the broken signal post, his clothing plastered with mud and grime, motionless, and with a nasty cut on the temple, lay Harry Sanderson.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CLOSED DOOR

A long saturating peace, a deep and drenching darkness, had folded Harry Sanderson. Dully at first, at length more insistently and sharply, a rhythmic pulsing sound began to annoy the quietude. K-track, k-track, k-track--it grew louder; it grew more momentous and material; it irritated the calm that had wrapped the animate universe. Shreds of confusing impression had begun to arrange themselves on a void of nothingness, blurred inchoate images to struggle through a delicious sensation of indifference and repose. Outlines were filling, contours growing distinct; the brain was beginning to resume its interrupted function. As though from an immeasurable distance he heard a low continuous roar, and now and again, through the roar, nearer voices.

Harry awoke. His mind awoke, but his eyes did not open at once, for the gentle swaying that cradled him was pleasant and the m.u.f.fled clack and hum soothed him like opium. He was as serenely comfortable as a stevedore who dozes out of the long stupefaction of exhaustion to the realization that the day is a holiday. His blood was coursing like quicksilver. He felt a buoyancy, a volatile pleasure, a sense of complete emanc.i.p.ation from all that clogged and cloyed--the sensuous delight of the full pulse and the perfect bodily mechanism.

He opened his eyes.

It was daylight. He was lying on dusty boards that rattled and vibrated beneath him--the floor of an empty freight car in motion. The sliding door was part-way open, and through it was borne the moist air of a river bay and the purring wash of the tide. A small brown dog, an abject, muddied and shivering morsel, was snuggled close to his side. It whined, as if with joy to see his eyes opened, and its stubby tail beat the floor.

Harry turned his head. Two men in dingy garments were seated on the floor a little distance away, thumbing a decrepit pack of cards over an empty box. He could see both side-faces, one weather-beaten and good-humored, the other crafty--knights of the road.

The sudden movement had sent a momentary twinge to his temple; he put up his hand--it touched a coa.r.s.e handkerchief that had been bound tightly about it. The corner hung down--it was soiled and stiff with blood. What was he doing there? Where was he? _Who was he?_

It came to him with a start that he actually for the moment did not know who he was--that he had ridiculously slipped the leash of his ident.i.ty. He smiled at his predicament. He would lie quietly for a few moments and it would come: of course it would come!

Yet it did not come, though he lay many moments, the fingers of his mind fumbling for the latch of the closed door. He had waked perfectly well--all save the slight cut on his temple, and that was clearly superficial, a mere scratch. Not a trouble or anxiety marred his soul; his mind was as clear and light as a lark's. Body and brain together felt as if they had never had a serious ache in the world. But all that had preceded his awakening was gone from him as completely as though it had had no existence. His mind, so far as memory of incident was concerned, was wiped clean, as a wet sponge wipes off a slate. Yet he felt no trouble or anxiety. That part of his brain which had vibrated to these emotions was, as it were, under a curious anesthesia. Goaded and overkeyed into a state of hypertension, it had retaliated with insensibility. All that had vexed and hurt was gone into the limbo with its own disturbing memories.

Stealthily he rose to a sitting posture and, with a frown of humorous perplexity, took a swift and silent inventory. Here he was, in a freight car, speeding somewhere or other, with a sore and damaged skull.

The dog clearly belonged to him, or he to the dog--there was an old intimacy in the fawning fondness of the amber eyes. Yonder were two tramps, diverting themselves in their own way, irresponsible and questionable birds of pa.s.sage. He scanned his own clothing. It was little better than theirs. His coat was threadbare, and with mud, oil and coal-dust, was in a more disreputable state. His wristbands were grimy, and one cuff-link had been torn away. He had no hat.

He bethought himself of his pockets, and went through them methodically one by one. They yielded several dollars in coin, a penknife and a tiny gold cross, but not a letter, not a sc.r.a.p of paper, nothing to serve him. The gleam of a ring on his finger caught his eye; he rubbed away the dirt and carefully examined it, wondering if the stone was real. His hand was slightly cut and swollen, and the circlet would not come off, but by shifting it slightly he could see the white depression made by long wear. The setting was an odd one, formed of the twisted letters H.

S. Those naturally should be his initials, but there he stopped. He repeated to himself all the names he could think of beginning with S, but they told him nothing.

He looked himself over again, carefully, reflectively--many a time of old he had regarded himself with the same amused, fastidious tolerance when dressed for a "slumming" expedition--his head a little to one side, the ghost of a smile on his lips. He put out his hand and laid it on the spaniel's head.

Its rough tongue licked his fingers; it held up one forepaw mutely and lamely. He drew the feverish, dirty little creature into his lap and examined the limp member. It was broken.

"Poor little beggar!" said he under his breath. "So you've been knocked out, too!" With his knife he cut a piece from the lining of his coat and with a splinter of wood from the floor he set the fractured bone and wrapped the leg tightly. The dog submitted without a whimper, and when he set it down, it lay quietly beside him, watching him with affectionate canine solicitude.

"I wonder who we are, you and I," muttered Harry Sanderson whimsically.

"I wonder!"

His gaze turned to where he could see the sunshine dancing and shimmering from the tremulous water. He sniffed the warm air--it was clear and sweet. Not a cloud was in the perfect sky. How fine he felt, broken head and all!

He looked across the car, where the card players were still absorbed.

Over the shoulder of one he could see the hand he held--a queen, two aces, a seven and a deuce. For an instant something in his brain snapped and crackled like the sputtering spark of an incomplete insulation--for an instant the fingers almost touched the latch of the closed door. Then the sensation faded, and left a blank as before. He rose to his feet and walked forward.

The players looked around. One of them nodded approvingly.

"Right as a trivet!" he said. "I made a pretty good job of that cut of yours. Hurt you much?"

"No," said Harry. "I'm obliged to you for the attention."

"Foolish to walk on a railroad track," the other went on. "By your looks, you've been on the road long enough to know better. We figgered it out that you was just a-going to cross the railroad bridge when the freight raised merry h.e.l.l with you. We stopped to tank there and we picked you up, you and your four-legged mate. Must have been a bit squiffy, eh?"

He winked, and took a flask from his pocket. "Have a hair of the dog that bit you?" he said.

Harry took the flask, and, wiping the top on his sleeve, uncorked it.

Something in the penetrating odor of the contents seemed to cleave through far mental wastes to an intimate, though mysterious goal. He put it to his lips and drank thirstily.

As the burning liquid scorched his throat, a recrudescence of old impulses surged up through the crust of more modern usage. Mentally, characteristically, he was once more the incongruous devil-may-care figure in whom conspicuous achievement and contradictory excesses had walked hand in hand. The Harry Sanderson of the new, remorseful, temperate life, of chastened impulses, of rote and rule and reformed habit--the rector of St. James--had been lost on that wild night ride.

The man who had awakened in the freight car was the Satan Sanderson of four years before, who, under stress of mental illness and its warped purview, in that strenuous scene in the chapel, had regained his ancient governance.

Harry handed back the flask with a long breath. There was a composed yet reckless light in his eye--the old veiled gleam of vagary, and paradox, and escapade. He seated himself beside them.

"Thank you," he said. "With your permission, gentlemen, I will take a hand in the game."

CHAPTER XIV

THE WOMAN WHO REMEMBERED

Since that tragical wedding-day at the white house in the aspens, Jessica had pa.s.sed through a confusion of experiences. She had always lived much in herself, and to her natural reserve her blindness had added. As a result her knowledge both of herself and of life had been superficial. She had been drawn to Hugh by both the weakest and the n.o.blest in her, in a self-obliterating worship that had counted her restored sight only an ornament and glory for her love. In the baleful hour of enlightenment she had been lost, whirled away, out into the storm and void, every landmark gone, every light extinguished, her feet set in the "abomination of desolation." The first bitter shock of the catastrophe, however, seemed to burn up in her the very capacity for further poignant suffering, and she went through the motions of life apathetically.

Change of scene and the declining health of David Stires occupied, fortunately, much of her waking thoughts. After the first few months of travel he failed steadily. His citric-acid moods were forgotten, his harsh tempers put aside. Hour after hour he lay in his chair, gazing out from the wide sun parlor of the sanatorium on the crest of Smoky Mountain, whither their journeying had finally brought them. He had never spoken of Hugh. But Jessica, sitting each day beside him, reading to him till he dropped asleep, seeing the ever-increasing sadness in his face, knew the hidden canker that gnawed his heart.

To the northward the slope of the mountain fell gradually to fields of violet-eyed alfalfa, and twice a day a self-important little donkey-engine drew a single car up and down between the great gla.s.s building on the ridge and the junction of the northern railroad. This view did not attract her; she liked best the southern exposure, with its flushed, serrated snow-peaks in the distance, the warmer brown shadows of the gulch-seamed hills unrolling at her feet, and at their base the treeless, busy little county-seat two miles away. In time her fiercer pain had dulled, and her imagination--naturally so importunate--had begun to seize upon her surroundings. In the summer season the sanatorium had few guests, and for this she was thankful. Doctor Brent, its head, rallying her on her paleness, drove her out of doors with good-natured severity, and when she was not with David Stires she walked or rode for hours at a time over the mountain trails. Breathing in the crisp air of alt.i.tude her spirits grew more buoyant. The beauty of shrub and flower, of cloud and sky, began to call to her, and the breath of October found a tinge of color in her cheek. She fed the squirrels, listened to the pert chirp of the whisky-jack and the whirring drum of the partridge, or sat on a hidden elevation which she named "The k.n.o.b," facing across the shallow valley to the south.

The k.n.o.b overlooked a little gra.s.sy shelf a few hundred feet below, where stood a miner's cabin, with weed-grown gravel heaps near by, in front of which a tree bore the legend, painted roughly on a board: "The Little Paymaster Claim." From its point of vantage, too, un.o.bserved, she could look down into the gulch far below, where yellowish-brown cones reared like gigantic ant-hills--the ear-marks of the placer miner--and gray streaks indicated the flumes in which, by tortuous meanderings, the water descended to do its work in the sluices. She could even watch the toiling miners, hoisting the gravel by windla.s.ses, or shovelling it into the long narrow boxes through which the foaming water raced. So limpid was the air that in the little town she could distinguish each several building lining the single straight street--a familiar succession of gilded cafe, general emporium and drug store, with the dull terra cotta "depot" at one end, and on the other, on a sunburned acre of its own, the glaring white court-house, flanked by the post-office and the jail.

She could see the clouds of dust, the wagons. .h.i.tched at the curb and the drab figures grouped at the corners or pa.s.sing in and out of doorways.

Her interest had opened eagerly to these scenes. The solitudes soothed and the life of the community below, frankly primitive and uncomplicated, attracted her. Between the town of Smoky Mountain and the expensive sanatorium on the ridge a great social gulf was fixed; the latter's patrons for the most part came and went by the narrow-gage road that linked with the northern junction; the settlement far below was only a feature of the panorama for which they paid so well. Even Doctor Brent--who had perched this place of healing where his patients could breathe air fresh from the Pacific and cooled by the snow-peaks--knew it chiefly through two of its citizens, Mrs. Halloran, the capable, bustling wife of the proprietor of the Mountain Valley House, the town's single hostelry, who brewed old-fashioned blackberry wine and cordials for his patients, and Tom Felder, a young lawyer whom he had known on the coast before ill health had sent him to hang out his shingle in a more genial alt.i.tude.

The latter sometimes came for a chat with the physician, and on one of these calls Jessica and he had met. She had liked his keen, good-humored face and waving, slightly graying hair. She had met him once since on the mountain road, and he had walked with her and told her quaint stories of the townspeople. She did not guess that more than once since then he had walked there hoping to meet her again. He had taken her to Mrs. Halloran, whose heart she had won by praise of her cherry cordial.

As Mrs. Halloran said afterward: "'Twas no flirt with the bottle and make love to the spoon! She ain't a bit set up. Take the word I give you, Tom Felder, an' go and swap lies with the doctor at the santaranium soon again. Ye can do worse."

This had been Jessica's first near acquaintance with the town, but since that time she had often reined up at the door of the neat hotel to pa.s.s a word with Mrs. Halloran or to ask for another bottle of the cherry cordial, which the sick man she daily tended found grateful to his jaded palate.

"It brings back my boyhood," David Stires said to her one afternoon, tapping the bottle by his wheel-chair. "That was before the chemist married the vintner's daughter. Somehow this has the old taste."